CoD Advanced Warfare Projected To Sell 3mil Less Than Ghosts

This is according to Cinema Blend, who reports the Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia expects Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to ship 15% fewer copies in the fourth quarter of 2014, which equates to 17 million instead of 20 million.

Call of Duty experienced a down year in 2013 despite Ghosts selling $1 billion into retail—not actual sales to customers—in its first 24 hours.

Players may be fatigued by the annual blockbuster franchise, as Call of Duty: Ghosts was met with somewhat lukewarm reception. Bhatia expects this may lead players to holding off on purchasing Advanced Warfare unless “word-of-mouth or reviews are strong”.

According to Bhatia 2014 will likely be a down year for PS3 and Xbox 360 sales—50% and 46% respectively—and consumer indecision about upgrading to PS4 and Xbox One may be factors working against cross-generation titles like Advanced Warfare.

He does concede that Advanced Warfare could perform better than its predecessor due to the “lack of competition” this year, as Battlefield Hardline has been delayed to early 2015. Activision’s latest billion dollar franchise, Destiny, has performed well early in its release. It remains to be seen if the Xbox One exclusive Halo: The Master Chief Collection will cut into Advanced Warfare’s sale numbers.

SOURCE

Honestly, I think that's a little sad- Advanced Warfare genuinely looks like a compelling game, and it sucks to see that Activision's mishandling of the franchise in recent years might kill what appears to be a legitimately good game at retail. Although, let's be fair here, 17 million sold is still a massive number.

I hope that if Advanced Warfare is good enough, it revives interest in the franchise, especially since Treayrch's Call of Duty will be hitting next year, and whoo boy that will be awesome.

Ouch

Good.

Cinem...

Ghosts wasn't cool, but this game seems pretty damn awesome. Day One, and all that stuff to rile up the hardcore crowd.

I just wish COD will stop this futuristic sh** and get back to its roots.

If it gets good reviews, I expect this game to sell just as much or more then Ghosts.

Doubtful. Ghosts got amazing reviews for some reason.

No it didn't, it's a 73 on Metacritic.

I meant the PS4 version. (Usually the one most reviewers use for some reason.) GameSpot gave it an 8 and IGN gave it a 8.8. Which we all know are both overbloated for its contents heh.

Even the PS4 version is rated pretty low. No version of Ghosts touched even 80 on Metacritic, and general consensus even among the average CoD buying consumer is that Ghosts reviewed poorly, and it had it coming for being a bad game.

I understand the frustration with Call of Duty, but in general, they have always at least been good games for what they are- especially Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, and Black Ops. Black Ops 2 was also neat and experimentative, Modern Warfare 3 at least had momentum if nothing else. Ghosts was just an all around disappointment. My only hope is Advanced Warfare breathes new life into the series, and takes it back to the heights it scaled with Black Ops. Plus, as I said, next year's game is being helmed by Treyarch. And boy, I cannot wait to see what they do.

It's "roots" is what got them to go into more and more futuristic in the first place, that's why people got so angry about World at War, even today there's people who don't miss world war shooters at all

Gotta love gamers.

Gamers complain when devs rehash the same game over and over again.

Gamers complain when devs "abandon their roots" and start going in new directions.

Head asplode.

When they abandon their roots and go in a much worse direction.

good. sooner cod dies the better

Hopefully this is a sign that the online FPS is becoming less popular.

I am said person. What a load of garbage ghosts was. The campaign was mediocre at best.

@charizard1605: if u are implying that mw2 was better than mw3 best joke today!!!!!!!

Well then again it's camp city vs cluster ****

Both sucked anyway

Good. There's better games to be played this holiday season.

eh at least MW2 had reasonable map design, MW3's maps were some of the worst I have ever seen. IMO that is the worst game in the series but I haven't played Ghosts and it looked like crap.

I played Advanced Warfare at the Multiplayer reveal back in August but I had to use a Xbone controller for the first time so I struggled to get a feel for how it played. It definitely has the most changes to the gameplay that has been seen in quite a while but it still has the same frenzied pace where everyone sprints in circles. Only now the mechanics support that kind of play a bit better. The improvements to weapon sounds are probably the thing I appreciated most. Its a bit like Crysis 2/3's multiplayer but way less clunky and with better hit detection/net code.

#FirstWorldProblems

Yeah not possible... cod ghost is the worst cod game ever made. IW should just give it up, they suck at making COD games. I hope sledgehammer's COD will at least be decent.

Of course it is. CoD fans are morons and just want more of the same. God forbid someone actually try and improve that game

Seemed like many of my coworkers (highschool kids), werent going to pick it up.

"What could they do differently?"

Does look like it could be pretty good from what Ive seen.

@with_teeth26: we both know activision or whoever too cheap for dedicated servers

Improved hit detection lol

6-7 million sales is probably all they need to break even though.

better than the Crysis games doesn't mean good. Those games had some horrific net code

I hope not.

I'd rather it just be a sign that CoD is becoming less popular since it's a bad FPS series. I'm all for good FPS series any day of the week though.

It's gonna sell less coz dudebros don't like change.

@papatrop: cod not bad as in name 10 FPS franchises that can compete and have w large enough community to be relevant.

The problem with FPS is that the whole genre is crap and COD will always beat imitators imo

What's a good fps series and why?

Retailer shipping is based off of pre-order numbers, maybe people are less interested, or maybe people realize there's really no reason to for themselves to pre-order.

Only 17 million copies. How on earth can we go on?

**** this. Enough of this yearly trash.

I think sales will be higher. Ghost was trash, and everyone is pretty hyped about this new one. I've seen people who haven't played COD since BLOPS1 get hyped about this one. It looks meh to me, but I'll try it out.

Can't say I'm disappointed the LCD of game design is showing reduced sales.

After all of the complaints about the game sticking to the same formula, they change it and it sells less. Irony.

Not really interested in the game myself. MW3 and BO2 could not keep my occupied online for more than a few hours. Found the free trial of Ghost about as addictive.

@nutcrackr: Only clocked in 6 days i think on MW3 last COD

I mean I think I had like 48 days on MW1, 24 days on MW2, then after 3 was like well its the same ol shit gg. Well no each MW plas differently, it was too easy and each version of MW was repetitive and feels too similar to its predecessor once u start getting your killstreaks every match. Camp here pew pew, camp here pew pew, AC130 repeat xyz times.

I played the SP of Ghosts more than the MP which never has happened to me in the previous CoD games. I ended up returning it a week later. I don't plan on getting AW. I'm much more interested in Treyarch's iteration of CoD. I have loved their last two games.

Because Destiny sold like shit, obviously.

1-1.5 is break even on a AAA budget title.

I doubt that's what they need to break even, that number is probably way smaller.

How many times can you revisit WWII and no one wants to play WWI.

No shock here

The sooner those dudebro games die the better.

This is one of the fun facts of projected profits ;) Once they're high, they're expected to stabilize or increase; the obvious eventual plummet is always viewed as a failure, regarless of how expected it was.

This is basically why you can't treat entertainment as a clear cut business... A lack of heart will show itself sooner or later and that's why both movies and games are generally uninspired.

I miss the days when games only selling a few hundred thousand to maybe a few million was seen as a huge success.. A success that allows a developer to continue making their specific game niche franchise with a fanbase.. Gaming has become worse with these bandwagon trains in which publishers are pushing for unrealistic gains because they are suddenly seen as a huge success.. It's like the bullshit WoW.. Where we hear doom and gloom when the population dwindles to a "mere" 7 million (far greater than any monthly mmo in history still..), these expectations are going to cause a crash in the industry.. Where franchises are stomped out and abandoned because they didn't reach the high expectations (even though they are still pulling a profit).. This is going to lead to a collapse in the industry with this constant push for things like this..

This. The budget for major franchises is spiraling out of control. Look no further than Final Fantasy, which has the ability to sink Square Enix if it fails.