Picking apart Call of Duty’s launch sales is an annual activity – as physical sales are tallied up for the official UK chart, while publisher Activision brings out a press release designed to trumpet its own take.
Boxed sales of the publisher’s flagship franchise – the metric counted by UK numbers company Chart-Track – have been flagging for years. COD’s physical sales peak came with Modern Warfare 3, back in 2011. Every release since then, with the exception of COD WW2, has been part of a notable downward trend.
This year, for example, physical copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 were down 50 per cent on last year’s WW2, and down 59 per cent compared to Black Ops 3.
Source: Eurogamer Black Ops 4 physical launch sales lowest Call of Duty has seen for a decade