The upcoming Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is expected to sell significantly less copies than both Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Call of Duty: Ghosts, suggests the business firm Cowen Group.
According to the in-depth report published by Cowen & Co., they studied Amazon’s pre-order figures and found that Advanced Warfare will sell less than 40 per cent compared with last year’s Ghosts and, more interestingly, an enormous drop of 70 per cent next to 2012’s Black Ops II.
“Advanced Warfare is now pacing almost 40 per cent behind last year’s Ghosts (vs. 50 per cent last week) and almost 70 per cent behind 2012’s Black Ops 2 (vs. 80 per cent last week),” reads an extract from the company’s findings. “We continue to believe CoD will be down meaningfully vs. last year. With the franchise facing two consecutive significant year on year declines in sales, we think it is prudent to assume it has peaked.”
Cowen & Co., however, found some positives for this year’s Call of Duty instalment, with the title’s well-known reputation and appeal putting it in a position to surpass the sales achieved by Bungie’s open-world IP Destiny.
“Activision’s Destiny continues to track well post-launch, with the game’s Amazon rankings actually up vs. two weeks ago,” Cowen & Co. added. “We think sales are likely to slowdown over the next weeks as a spate of new games hit the market, but we would not be surprised to see a reacceleration in December once the first DLC The Dark Below is released.
“We continue to expect first year (12-month) unit sales of 12-13MM units. While we now think it is less likely that Destiny will outsell Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, if Destiny enjoys stronger legs and reaches 15MM+ units, we believe it could still happen (due in part to our concerns about CoD).”
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the first game in the franchise to be developed by Sledgehammer Games under Activision’s three-studio development cycle, and it was confirmed earlier this month that users who purchase a digital version of the title on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 can upgrade to their respective current-generation counterparts for free.
With a recent launch trailer featuring a montage of footage from both the story and multiplayer in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, including appearances from Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker (both of whom have been motion captured in the title), this year’s instalment is scheduled for release worldwide on November 4th for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.