Every year, Activision’s Call of Duty franchise faces a strong opening in its first week, topping sales charts within a sheer matter of days. And for good reason. Since the emergence of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the series has been synonymous with easy-to-play, difficult-to-master first-person shooter gameplay perfect for console players around the world. But despite strong sales in its opening week, Activision might have room for concern for its flagship franchise. It seems their latest offering, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, has failed to outperform its predecessor. Not just that, the game also faces extremely low numbers among PC players.
According to GFK Chart-Track, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is “the second biggest release of the year” on the tracker’s “All Formats Chart,” trailing behind EA’s FIFA 17. Yet the game saw a 48.4% decrease in sales when compared to Black Ops III. Although the game did successfully knock Battlefield 1 down to second place during its launch week, EA still dominates overall platform sales, holding onto the list via FIFA 17 and Titanfall 2. So while Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare did see a strong start, EA seems to be the larger seller in the chart overall. And Activision certainly has an embarrassing predicament to address with the game’s relatively low sales.
Things don’t look very promising among PC players, either. As OverClock3D reported on Nov 6th, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare hovers around 13,000 players, sitting well below Farming Simulator 2017 and Counter-Strike 1.6: which both have 21,220 players and 19,211 players, respectively. As a frame of reference, stats for Nov 7th show a peak total of 980,521 Dota 2 players, 615,250 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players and 83,516 Civilization VI users. In other words, Infinite Warfare‘s performance is shockingly low for any PC multiplayer game: let alone a Call of Duty release.
Due to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare‘s relatively lower sales, fans are left wondering what could be the cause for the drop in players. Some blame the move to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, seeing how the game had no PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 release this time around. Or perhaps the sci-fi setting has fans feeling lukewarm about the game. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare does, after all, break significantly from the future tech settings seen in earlier games. Time will tell how the new Call of Duty release is received.
