Activision struck a metaphorical vein of gold when they tapped into the modern gaming market with their revolutionary Modern Warfare shooter back in 2007 and since then the series has gone through hills and valleys, but always remained a steady seller.
Recently however, as of November 2014, sales of the series have been down with Call of Duty Advanced Warfare being down 27% compared to Call of Duty Ghosts. But despite being down, the game was the top selling title in the US at retail for 2014, that helps lend some scope to the sales the series achieves.
The latest iteration of the Call of Duty series, which is yet to be named, is expected to have sales that are going to “be consistent” with the sales of Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. Speaking at the Q4 Earnings Call, Activision’s Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said, “Our 2015 guidance on Call of Duty is nearly flat year over year, but we saw that’s a pretty conservative planning assumption. We have Treyarch developing the game, we’ll have a larger installed base in next-gen hardware to sell into, and we believe our Q4 new release is going to be one of our best games yet. So we think the future’s bright.”
We’re certain that they would rather see sales go up, but posting a $1 Billion margin of sales is nothing to be sniffed at and is more than enough for any developer and publisher when they have so many other titles under their belt.