Activision Blizzard has announced that Call of Duty: Ghosts, the latest installment in the COD franchise, has surpassed the $1 billion mark. The announcement is a bit misleading though, because the company has only shipped a billion dollars worth of product to stores shelves and hasn’t actually sold that amount.
Sales for the 10th anniversary release of the COD franchise are currently 10% lower than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and 20% below Call of Duty: Black Ops, according to video game analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. At the current rate, Activision is on track to sell 20 million copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts this year.
While Activision CEO Bobby Kotick calls the Call of Duty franchise “by far the largest console franchise of this generation,” sales for Ghosts falls short of this year’s biggest release, Grand Theft Auto 5. The September release of Take-Two Interactive’s GTA V netted the company $800 million on launch day and took a total of only three days to surpass a billion dollars in sales, not a billion dollars in “inventory sales” like Activision announced.
Comparatively, last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops earned Activision an estimated $500 million on its first day and (as of now) is the franchise’s largest release.
The reason for the slight dip in sales may be due to gamers waiting for Ghosts to be released on the next-gen consoles Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on Nov. 15 and Nov. 22, respectively. Currently, the game is only available on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U.
