Call of Duty: Ghosts Sales Are "Troubling," Analyst Says

[hermes]

Perhaps now the AAA industry can begin to move forward again.

Probably not quite yet if the game industry is anything like the television industry. I mean, American Idol is an absolute nosedive, but FOX continues to give it new season after new season. Once a company finds something with the level of success both those things have shown, they're going to latch on to it until it bursts into flames.

Oh I don't give a damm if Activision crashes or at least looses millions trying to ride this to the end, I just want to see the other AAA publishers not play 'follow the COD leader' so much.

I would think Activision will ride this wave and the next one (which will likely be MOBA games or accessory based adventure games) just fine.

Just because the current wave seems to be loosing strength, doesn't mean there is not another one just around the corner waiting to be ride until we can't take it.

OT: I hope this is a true sign that the public will move away from the MMS a little, and not just the result of people having less income because of the new consoles. I am fully aware it will be replaced by the next best thing, but I am curious about what that will be.

 

[ZCAB]

Yep nothing to do with several million people waiting to get a PS4 before buying ghosts not at all.

Do you really think many people, let alone "several million", will be waiting to buy a game that:
a) will be replaced by another installment in a year and thus needs to be purchased as soon after release as possible to get the most out of it, and
b) has received very mixed reviews both from critics and especially from gamers, which means only those who got it on release will have bought it without question?

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of Call of Duty players who don't own a next-gen console yet have bought Ghosts on 360, PS3 or PC.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Well how 'bout that? You sh*t out a cookie-cutter sequel year after year, and suddenly people stop paying for it! Who'd have thunk it?

Not the games industry, apparently.

 

[Norix596]

It's not like Activison is known for taking popular and profitable franchises and destroying their value by running them into the ground with overly frequent and insufficiently varied games or anything right?

 

[ZCAB]

Yep nothing to do with several million people waiting to get a PS4 before buying ghosts not at all.

Do you really think many people, let alone "several million", will be waiting to buy a game that:
a) will be replaced by another installment in a year and thus needs to be purchased as soon after release as possible to get the most out of it, and
b) has received very mixed reviews both from critics and especially from gamers, which means only those who got it on release will have bought it without question?

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of Call of Duty players who don't own a next-gen console yet have bought Ghosts on 360, PS3 or PC.

CoD: Ghosts on the 4 consoles has sold over 13 million copies in 5 weeks. MW3 and Blops2 sold 18 million copies in 5 weeks. So yes I believe there are a couple of million people waiting to get the next console before buying.

Or, more likely, there are just fewer people interested in Ghosts.

 

[Moontouched-Moogle]

Well, if you milk the cow too much too quickly, it will run out of milk. It will produce more milk eventually, but you have to give it time. If, instead of pumping out yearly cookie-cutter installations, AAA developers released games on a slower cycle with more development time, we'd get the dual benefit of not only having (probably) better games, but also having fewer of them to bog us down and oversaturate the market.

AAA just needs to learn when to let go of the teat and let the cow rest for a while.

But if you milk the cow once a year, you will never run out of milk because the cow can produce it quicker than that... And you're a pretty lazy farmer but hey who am I to judge, city dweller and all.
I'm not sure if you're aware but Call of Duty games actually operate on a 2-year cycle, not one year. There are two developers who take it in turns to create games, so each game receives two years. Of course DLC is made too but this receives very little time as the developers have learnt to be efficient- take Black Ops 2, for example. Treyarch have three teams- multiplayer, zombies and campaign. Once the game was released multiplayer team spent their time releasing patches and creating the new maps (which doesn't take much time at all). Zombies team and campaign team alternated creating the zombie maps, so each map got double the time and no-one was sitting around doing nothing. Arguable the campaign team maps were better, some would say. If you've got this far congratulations you deserve a reward.
Should the singular of zombies be zomby? Or is that just me?

Yeah, I've known about the two-team process. It's Treyarch and Infinity Ward, right? Say what you will about the games themselves (not much of a fan myself), but that process seems to be working fairly well for them. Still results in another game each year, but at least they're generally more polished and stable (I think).

As for the cow, it kinda breaks the metaphor if you assume a year of game development time is equal to a year between milkings. By that logic, games aren't being made fast enough, because the cow is sore and desperately needs to be milked lest it explode or something. Or whatever it is milk-saturated cows do. Maybe they just leak it or shoot it out violently in a fit of rage. (Also a city dweller here.)

 

[Roxas1359]

Because the same didnt happen with Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero /sarcasm

Im suprised it lasted as long as it did though

It's only lasted a little longer than Tony Hawk really. I mean, the first Pro Skater game came out in 1999, and then went on until Proving Ground which was in 2007.
Then again, I think the last worthwhile game to buy for the series was American Wasteland in 2005 so Ghosts might be the Project 8 of this trend. At least I hope so.
Meanwhile, Call of Duty first started in 2004 and now we're going into 2014 so that's about 10 years as opposed to Tony Hawk's 8.

 

[kasperbbs]

Good news i'd say. How many copies of the same game can you sell year after year and expect it to get the same number of copies sold. Hopefully it will drop enough to force them to make something new for a change.

 

[octafish]

Hopefully EA learns from this, and the poor launch of BF4 (I love BF4 BTW) and allows DICE plenty of time to develop Mirrors Edge and Battlefront before the turn their gaze towards Battlefield again. When they do I hope they look at BF2143. Unfortunately EA will just see this as a chance to push another BF game out.

 

[KazeAizen]

Well how 'bout that? You sh*t out a cookie-cutter sequel year after year, and suddenly people stop paying for it! Who'd have thunk it?

Seriously. Nintendo is kind of guilty of this as well but I think there is a huge difference between Nintendo and these guys. Nintendo actually gives a damn and puts some effort into the sequels.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

HA HA HA! That's really too bad. I mean too bad for them but great for gaming in general. WoooOOOooo!

Unless they're just waiting for the people who can buy consoles yet to catch up, then it isn't that great.

 

[Lightknight]

Well how 'bout that? You sh*t out a cookie-cutter sequel year after year, and suddenly people stop paying for it! Who'd have thunk it?

The title has sold more than 13 million copies across all consoles despite having only come out last month.

I hardly consider that people "stop paying for it". Is it reasonable to consider that these games, regardless of what kind of ire you have for them, are some of the most popular titles in the history of gaming because they are fun to play. Sometimes selling more than 6 million copies in the first week for just one version (e.g. Modern Warfare III for the 360).

I do think it's silly that they put out another game every year but the Modern Warfare vs Black Ops games have always felt like different and competing IPs. I prefer the Black Ops line to the Modern Warfare line, for example. Primarily because the local mulitplayer of black ops is always so much more robust with bots and such.

HA HA HA! That's really too bad. I mean too bad for them but great for gaming in general. WoooOOOooo!

How? Does it somehow harm you that these studios are producing FPS titles that millions of people enjoy? I get that it's popular to put down something that's currently popular but 13 million copies in one month is more than most games will ever sell in the entirety of their existence. To put that in contrast, Super Mario 64 and Halo 3 both sold less than 12 million copies each. Super Mario Galaxy? 11 million. FFVII? 10 million on PS.

Go ahead and peruse around. Look at the biggest titles and see how they stack up against the COD series. Most individual versions of the COD franchise fall within the top 50 biggest sellers of all time. That's individual versions like the ps3 version with the 360 version sitting right next to it.

 

[Lightknight]

I love how everyone is going "YAY! THAT MEANS NO MOAR COD!" when even a 20% drop is still an absurd profit for the series. Every series has fluctuating profits and these are professional businessmen who are smarter than anyone gives them credit for. Don't start celebrating the death of something that isn't even hurting you when you're only seeing a momentary decline at best.

Exactly. I am personally surprised that COD games are still making the money they are but 13 million copies sold is still insane profit without accounting for digital sales AND it's in a weird period of market transition where the preferred console is hard to come by.

This is like when WoW loses some subscribers and everyone starts screaming "DEAD GAME! BLI$$ARD'S GOING TO TANK" when they're still on the top of the market by a massive margin.

Not to mention that they've already made insane profits on a game they produced in 2004. So it's funny to see people think that an aging product that has been immensely popular means that the company is in some kind of trouble.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Not suprising considering its a re-hash.
Although I've never ejoyed CoD, I don't hate it, I hate the industry for trying to imitate ti so many gods damn times

 

[Lightknight]

Not suprising considering its a re-hash.
Although I've never ejoyed CoD, I don't hate it, I hate the industry for trying to imitate ti so many gods damn times

Yeah, they're certainly the WoW of FPS titles. It's somewhat interesting to see other franchises try to ape it. At least with the companies trying to copy CoD it isn't beloved franchises trying and failing like the WoW competitors did.

Though, it isn't a re-hash so much as it is a sequel. Sequels don't generally wipe everything that came before away. It builds upon itself. COD games are going for realism. As such, there's not as much progress to be made when you're getting so close. So I don't know how you'd like them to innovate in a series that is currently the very definition of Shooters.

 

[shrekfan246]

Well, if you milk the cow too much too quickly, it will run out of milk. It will produce more milk eventually, but you have to give it time. If, instead of pumping out yearly cookie-cutter installations, AAA developers released games on a slower cycle with more development time, we'd get the dual benefit of not only having (probably) better games, but also having fewer of them to bog us down and oversaturate the market.

AAA just needs to learn when to let go of the teat and let the cow rest for a while.

But if you milk the cow once a year, you will never run out of milk because the cow can produce it quicker than that... And you're a pretty lazy farmer but hey who am I to judge, city dweller and all.

You're taking the analogy a tad too literally right now. The time scale between the "milking" of a video game franchise and milking a cow obviously isn't the same, but you can still make accurate comparisons if you adjust properly; For instance, say a year in video games is equivalent to two months on the farm. After two, three, maybe even four years the games are still going to be profitable, just like after six or eight months a dairy cow is still going to be producing a viable amount of milk. But once you start reaching six years of ever-present games, or twelve months for the farm, it's going to be more and more difficult for that upkeep to be consistent, because the cow just can't keep up and handle it as their body wasn't naturally designed for that.

We're at a decade of a new Call of Duty being released per year now (even more if you want to go into spin-offs or alternate versions). And while you're right that they have two different development studios working on it, they're still simply running the franchise into the ground with oversaturation and a stumbling of overall production values, just like they did with Tony Hawk games, just like they did with Guitar Hero. Especially when the offerings of the one developer directly contradict any steps forward made by the other developer, as has reportedly happened with Ghosts.

 

[BakaSmurf]

I'm clearly in the minority, but I am of the opinion that Infinity Ward should be barred from making future Call of Duty games, and all the development money that would have been given to them should be funneled to Treyarch instead, who should be allowed 2-3 year development cycles, because Treyarch actually fucking TRIES (or maybe Infinity Ward does try, and is just really incompetent) and their last contribution to the franchise took several dozen steps forward that CoD desperately needed.

I could live with Treyarch doing a game every couple of years. But could Activision?

Ha, obviously not, being that they'd clearly rather plow their franchises into the ground instead of put some effort into them and make them a constant in gaming for years to come. It won't be the first time they've done it, as we're all well aware, but still, it would be nice if they did give Treyarch exclusive development rights and decent dev cycles, as they've proven they can produce half-decent to downright enjoyable games using the license and only a year in which to do it.