The franchise is entering a long-term decline

Oct 27, 2014 22:39 GMT  ·  By

The analysts working on the video game industry for Cowen and Company predict that the upcoming Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will sell 40 percent less copies overall than last year's Ghosts and up to 70% less than Black Ops 2.

GamesIndustry.biz quotes a report from the company as saying that "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."

The prediction is based on the pre-order information coming from retailers and on the way the fans of the series have been reacting to the reveal of gameplay features that will be part of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Cowen and Company are also claiming that Activision is not right about an overall decline in pre-orders across the industry which is affecting the launch of its new first-person shooter.

The analyst firm believes that the game will see a decline in its pre-order numbers and that other properties like Watch Dogs and Destiny have shown that records linked to copies bought before launch can still be broken.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be out on November 4 and gamers who want to play 24 hours before that date and get access to double experience for their character can pick up the special Day Zero Edition.

Destiny will continue to perform well

Cowen and Company suggests that one reason for the relatively disappointing pre-order numbers for the new Call of Duty might be the better than expected performance of Destiny, which is linked to the same genre.

Their report adds, "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."

Depending on market conditions and other factors, Destiny might end up selling more copies in 2014 than Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Bungie has said that it has long-term plans for its shooter and Activision now has two big first-person shooter franchises that it needs to promote, which means that the games will inevitably compete with each other.

As the older one of the two series, Call of Duty might be the more affected.