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Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Sales Estimates Downgraded by Analyst Firm

"Soft" sales continue, according to one analyst.

29 Comments

One analyst firm has downgraded its sales estimates for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The company Robert W. Baird put out a note to investors today in which it said sales of the game, based on its retail reorder checks, continue to be "soft." The downward projection is partially offset by higher download volumes (a good thing for Activision, as downloads are higher-margin) and increased microtransaction revenue.

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Robert W. Baird said Infinite Warfare's sales trends have "improved somewhat" as a result of discounts and promotions, but overall physical and digital unit sales projections are now pegged to decline 20 percent compared to last year's Black Ops III. This comes out to down 35 percent at retail, but up 15 percent digitally. The firm was previously forecasting a 13 percent overall decline.

At the same time, Robert W. Baird has increased its estimates for Infinite Warfare's revenue from microtransactions. A lot of Infinite Warfare's microtransaction revenue is still to come, as none of the game's four expansion packs have been released yet. Existing microtransactions are for things like the game's virtual currency, Call of Duty Points.

It's worth noting that Activision always expected that Infinite Warfare would perform worse than Black Ops III, in part because Infinite Warfare is a new brand and Black Ops is an established, best-selling one. Whether or not the publisher anticipated this steep of a decline, however, isn't clear.

GameSpot has contacted Activision in an attempt to get more details about Infinite Warfare's sales performance. We'll update this story with anything we hear back.

In other news about Infinite Warfare, Activision has released a new piece of DLC to benefit its military veterans charity, the Call of Duty Endowment.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

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Dark_Matters

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Edited By Dark_Matters

Warfare is always overpriced. It stays $60 bucks for years, and then after it's been out for 4 years, decreases to $45.

People are probably tired of paying $60 (or much more depending on the pack) for a derivative 6 hour campaign and multiplayer that's the same every year.

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clarens56

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Release MWR from hostage

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k00lenkrazey

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Title should say:

"Call of Duty: MWR Sales Estimates Downgraded by Analyst Firm"

Cuz thats the game people are buying.

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Baytuh99

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Still gonna be #1 on npd for November lol.

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ghost140

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I wish they had released MW remaster separately it would have been really hilarious to see it sell way above Infinite warfare.

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Slypher9

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@ghost140: Come on bro... Think Think...

I'm a CoD fan, and i know something was up when they decide to bundle it with Infinty CrapFare oops Warfare..

Knowing Greedy Activision, the could have sold MW for $30 and it would sell Better than IW release, so what they cleverly did is bundle it so it can be the saving grace of Infinity CrapFare, so it wouldn't cause a panic among investors that this new CoD is being out sold by a remaster..

Its a sound strategy, but this is the first time in my CoD playing years that i actually am staying on Last years release..

Infinity Warfare has a ok story, as most shooters do, but there bread and butter that keeps people playing months after they finish the campaign is lost in this..

Infinity Ward is being totally outshine by the other CoD development houses, its crazy... Just play Inifinity Warfare and you'll see its a mixture of Advance warfare (which outshines CoD Ghost) and Black Ops 3.. Its like they lost there vision and others are seeing for them.

While CoD Ghost also had a ok campaign, the MP maps where for the most part too big and crappy hit detection plague it for months.. They had a cool mechanic with the peek around wall thingy, all the had to do what kept that mechanic, shrink the map sizes, aim for a better hit detection system..

If Cod takes the setting back to the WW1+ era, i hope they don't task Infinity Ward to make it...

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Mi_Hung_Lo

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@slypher9: How old are you? What's Infinity Warfare? Did you just say Infinity Crapfare as well? Some people should pick up a book more often rather than play video games.

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ghost140

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Edited By ghost140

@slypher9: Whaa? Are you under the assumption that I did not know why they were bundled together? Cuz I am. I just wanted them to release it separately so we would get a report that MWR was outselling IW.

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Thanatos2k

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Edited By Thanatos2k

Thank god we've hit peak Duty. Even with their precious COD4 "remake" it couldn't cut it. Now the slow death slide can begin.

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howthegodzkill

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Edited By howthegodzkill

Go back to WWII. Watch sales numbers RISE! RISE!

Regardless of the campaign being incredible, online multi player kids don't have the attention spans for campaigns. I really wish games would be split into individual purchases for half the price since more thinkers prefer story's and campaigns while the rest just treat all online games like locusts.

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Slypher9

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@howthegodzkill: I'll rise only if Infinity Ward don't touch it... those guys are being outclass by the other CoD Dev houses..

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ShinraE5

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Am I the only one who laughed aloud at the "a new brand" part?

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nintendians

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i think it didn't do much because it look like sci-fi war game, are we even sure those would be in a real future, it not be adapted at all.

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jenovaschilld

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I and everyone I know are just waiting for Modern Warfare 4, the realism and the incredible maps of the first three games is what made the billion dollar franchises. This kill, die, respawn and repeat to nausism is tiresome. You could really setup strategies and use team work on MWs - where pushers, lane holders, campers all had a place. Instead of this respawn with an enemy right in front of your gun, and of course someone else respawns right behind you.

(ghosts, advance,infinite are a joke comparatively)

I mean, I know we are never gonna get the magic that was Jason West and Vince Zampella developed game, hell or probably even a game called Modern Warfare but the strong emphasis on weapons, gear, teamwork, map design, are what made the three games so different from all of the FPS shooter glut. Until then there are hundreds of games out this year alone worth playing, besides Infinite.

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Fartman7998

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Edited By Fartman7998

Maybe they shouldn't have ticked off a lot of people by forcing them to buy it in order to get the Modern Warfare remaster.

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Batusai4Ever

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probably the best CoD single player campaign...right there with Modern Warfare

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Slypher9

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@batusai4ever: not a bad point, but in all honesty i think most person who buy CoD, buy it for MP or Zombies.. You know, the modes that live on after campaign is over.

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Batusai4Ever

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@slypher9: totally agree with you but the multiplayer is still mad good and if you purchased the legacy edition you get two great multiplayer games. I just hope they do an update to add some space ship battles...those were really fun in the campaign.

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Kyelo

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Edited By Kyelo

To a passing observer the last couple of CoDs are all essentially the same game. That is an issue.

Yearly churned out franchise that has become incredibly dull, people will tire of it and sales will drop. Hopefully this will boot the developers up the a*s to get a bit more creative with setting, period, characters, story and gameplay.

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Slypher9

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@kyelo: The problem isn't so much the yearly turn out as each dev has 2+yrs to craft there entry before its release.. But the problem seems to be DIVERSITY.. How much time can you spin future warfare and tech and whats worse ALL 3 studios just released tech heavy stuff, talk about overkill and no internal communication...

What i would recommend they do is, one studio make WW1+ era games, the other make modern stuff and another do modern+furture mixed in.. eg, B.OPS 3 has a good balance of modern+future

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Kyelo

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@slypher9: Yep a historical department and a future one, rotate.

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Atzenkiller

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So the game's doing just as well if not better than earlier releases as more suckers spend money on microtransactions, a significant portion of buyers probably went for the $80 or 90€ version including the remake and in general COD games are way overpriced and remain so even years after release. Hence Activision is still making plenty of money off of it. When you start seeing the games being sold for similar prices as others game months or a year after release, that's when Activision might be concerned.

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firedrakes

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what i thought was funny was the reviews for this game talk almost everything about the single player and almost nothing about the multi. never seen that before on a cod game.

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mogan

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Edited By mogan  Moderator

@firedrakes: Well, the multiplayer this time was pretty much just the bog standard CoD multiplayer; it didn't do anything new. The single player, on the other hand, actually tried some different stuff and ended up being a real solid CoD campaign.

I think Infinite Warfare's problem is that it's got the competitive multiplayer module, the co-op multiplayer module, and the single player campaign to do, so it's splitting development resources three ways. If they'd dumped zombies and cut the PvP down to the essentials, they might have been able to try new things in the multiplayer and made the campaign twice as long. And I think that would have been a much better game.

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fisherking

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For the love of God, scrap this futuristic sci-fi bs, and just go back to good ole WW2. Or 'Nam.

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Kyelo

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Edited By Kyelo

@fisherking: Pretty much every war since 1900 would work: Yugoslav, Falklands, Iraq, Chinese/Sino, Vietnam, Korea, Russian civil...loads of places they could go, even before then for things like the American Civil or Napoleon although they'd have to be a bit more liberal with history for gameplay mechanics.

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balucha

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Forced myself to beat the campaign and deleted it after about 10 hours of multiplayer..... sticking with modern warfare and titanfall 2.

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ballaShotCaller

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looks like BF1 and TF2 did create at least a little dent.

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balucha

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@ballashotcaller: it didn't.... it's just that bad of a game.

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