Analyst: Call of Duty Ghosts, Watch_Dogs With Most Holiday Preorders

Cowen and Company’s Doug Creutz released a new report on pre-order numbers for the upcoming big releases of the year, with Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Ghosts on top and Ubisoft Montreal’s Watch_Dogs coming in just behind it. Interestingly, current estimates show that Ghosts will sell at about 75 percent of what Black Ops 2 did during the 2012 holiday season.

However, Watch_Dogs will be selling around 70 percent of Black Ops 2, with Grand Theft Auto V selling a bit over 58 percent of it. Creutz stated that GTA V’s pre-order number “almost certainly understates total pre-orders to-date, since we have only been tracking the Amazon data since E3 but GTA V was initially available for pre-order all the way back in November 2012.”

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Battlefield 4 have higher numbers than previous games in both series, and even Blizzard’s Diablo III looks poised for a decent reign with 1.5 million copies projected for sale this year. Meanwhile, 2K Marin’s The Bureau: XCOM Declassified hasn’t been able to generate much by way of pre-order numbers and Creutz expects it to sell less 250,000 copies by 2013 end.