The death of Call of Duty has been long foretold- every single Call of Duty game since the series hit its peak with Black Ops has been the one where the series finally meets its long anticipated decline. And yet, the games have continued trucking along- none of them met Black Ops’ insane 27 million units shipped worldwide, they’ve still been the highest selling titles each year they’ve released.
Ghosts might be a bit different though- with buzz around it being at an all time low, website PC Games N is reporting a dramatic decline in players logged into the game’s multiplayer on Steam.
Collectively, Ghosts logged in a peak of 49,000 players, which is less than Black Ops II’s 75,000 players in the same period (the multiplayer alone had 50,000 users, which is more than Ghosts managed in aggregate). None of the two games, however, compared to Modern Warfare 3, and it’s massive 125,000 players concurrently, or- even better- the original Black Ops, which managed 150,000 players in the same period.
Call of Duty is a great franchise- it is, it’s fun and it is good at what it does. There is definitely room for it in the market, but Activision needs to space it out with the releases.
Hopefully, an underperforming Ghosts will convince them of that.