Can Call of Duty: Black Ops III Outpace The Performance Of Previous Black Ops Titles?

It has been more than 5 weeks since the release of Activision Blizzard’s (NASDAQ: ATVI) Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and the sales trend for this title has been a bit interesting for analysts. No doubt, Call of Duty (COD) has been the most successful shooter franchise over the past 10 years, topping the charts in its genre worldwide for the past 3-4 years. Black Ops III is the twelfth edition for the franchise and only the third one on the new generation console platforms. According to the game sales data provided by VGChartz, there has been an interesting trend, although a somewhat still unfolding one, in the sales of the title compared to the previous COD entries.

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Black Ops III Pacing Up Quickly

Below are the graphs representing the total sales of the last 9 Call of Duty titles after the corresponding week number:

According to VGChartz weekly data, Black Ops III’s first week sales were apparently the lowest among the last 7 COD titles. However, its sales have picked up in the next three weeks surpassing last year’s sales of Advanced Warfare. The interesting fact to notice is that the four weeks sales of Black Ops III is still the lowest compared to the previous two Black Ops  titles. The reason behind this trend is that the titles before COD: Ghosts were released on previous generation consoles and the new generation consoles were not launched by then. Since, most of the core COD gamers had previous generation consoles installed and the industry-wide software sales were at its peak, more gamers bought their favorite shooter game. The interesting story line-up of Modern Warfare and Black Ops franchise further kept the COD’s demand strong. As a result, the initial few week sales of those titles were much higher.

Now as the new generation consoles were launched, most of the gamers were in the transition phase and were more keen on spending their money on buying the new consoles rather than spending them on game titles. With declining software sales worldwide and expensive new generation consoles, the demand for COD games declined comparatively. Furthermore, the new stories of Ghosts and Advanced Warfare for  the franchise did not go down well with the core fans.

With the re-introduction of the Black Ops story and with most of the transitioning over among the gamers, it seems the COD sales will start picking up from now on. As is visible from the data, net unit sales after the third and the fourth week has surpassed that of Advanced Warfare, and might even outperform Ghosts in the coming couple of weeks. Nonetheless, it will be tough for Black Ops III to surpass the sales of its previous two Black Ops  titles in the first ten weeks. However, with the software sales picking up pace, the net sales of Black Ops III over the next 3-4 months might actually be the highest in history.

Holiday Season Gaining More Importance Of Late

The chart above represents the unit sales of all of the last 9 COD titles in the second, third, and fourth week after their respective releases. There is a clear indication that since the release of the next generation consoles, COD unit sales in the fourth week surpassed that in the third week for the last three titles. The reason behind this interesting trend is that before 2013, COD titles were launched on PS3 and Xbox 360 and gamers who owned these consoles were more interested in buying the titles. So as soon these titles were launched, most of the sales occurred in the first 3 weeks.

However, the scenario changed after the release of PS4 and Xbox one. Initial release prices of COD titles were comparatively higher than its previous counterparts. Moreover, for the past three years, COD titles were available on a special discount price with the start of the holiday season. Furthermore, second week sales of Ghosts and Advanced Warfare declined 76% and 74% respectively from their respective first week sales, whereas the decline was just 56% for Black Ops III. Additionally, in the fourth week, the sales jumped only 12% for Ghosts from that in its third week, whereas it jumped a massive 55% and 44% for  Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III, respectively. Consequently, the sales of Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and  Black Ops III increased in the fourth week and might probably be even more in the fifth and sixth weeks for Black Ops III. 

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