While the Call of Duty franchise has enjoyed year-over-year growth in terms of worldwide sales, numbers released this week for the UK tell a different story for that particular region. According to the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association, Modern Warfare 3 moved 2,814,298 units between launch on November 8 and December 31, 2011, while Call of Duty's 2010 entry, Black Ops, sold 3,266,298 across the same holiday sales period in the previous year.
That's a decline of 452,000 units from Treyarch-developed Black Ops in 2010 to Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer Games-developed Modern Warfare 3 in 2011, though the latter was the fastest entertainment property in history to reach $1 billion in sales. As MCV points out, FIFA sales were also in decline in the UK, with nearly 200K fewer copies sold during 2011 than in 2010. All that said, let's not lose any sleep over the declines -- both CoD and FIFA's 2011 entries sold in the many millions in just the UK, let alone worldwide.
Reader Comments (32)
Posted: Jan 13th 2012 12:20AM abercrombieco2 said
@SamE it was actually one of the better single player in cod , well at least imo , this time they decided to beef up the single player.
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:10PM DarkSonata said
as if activision and ea would really care that there was a small decline in sales in certain region when there was an overall growth in sales worldwide (well at least for MW3, I don't know about FIFA12, but I'm sure it still did well)
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:17PM gilmontaubamgmailcom said
This would happen sooner or later. only activision with their short sighted strategy of milk as long as possible would not see how harmful their strategy is at long-term.
http://plasticvideogamecomic.blogspot.com/
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http://plasticvideogamecomic.blogspot.com/
Posted: Jan 12th 2012 10:33PM gettinmoney662 said
@gilmontaubamgmailcom
Fastest property to hit one billion in sales and 2.8 million copies sold in a single country. Yeah, what a terrible strategy they have.
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Fastest property to hit one billion in sales and 2.8 million copies sold in a single country. Yeah, what a terrible strategy they have.
Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:25PM Cranky Penguin said
I know everybody hates Activision but I think EA is worse. To my knowledge, Activision doesn't shut off game servers two years after the game comes out or have online passes. Both are guilty of overmilking franchises though.
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:30PM Traptz said
@Cranky Penguin
They might not shut off servers
But they never release mod tools anymore and they stop updating their games when a new one is about to come out..
So what's the point of playing a broken game that you can't fix? It's no different than not being able to play the game at all.
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They might not shut off servers
But they never release mod tools anymore and they stop updating their games when a new one is about to come out..
So what's the point of playing a broken game that you can't fix? It's no different than not being able to play the game at all.
Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:38PM Tar Heel360 said
@Cranky Penguin
If Activision actually had dedicated servers for CoD then maybe they could shut some down.
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If Activision actually had dedicated servers for CoD then maybe they could shut some down.
Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:40PM WeRequireMOARMinerals said
@Cranky Penguin Activision has servers?
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 9:35PM AGuyOnTheInternet said
@Traprz
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I do not recall MW2 or Black Ops still needing patches this late. I don't think either of them are "broken" still this late.
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Maybe I'm mistaken, but I do not recall MW2 or Black Ops still needing patches this late. I don't think either of them are "broken" still this late.
Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:29PM thatlameguy said
Are the Brits so polite they don't even shoot digital people?
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 6:54PM (Unverified) said
Considering that MW3 topped the UK sales chart for a while, even resisting the Skyrim onslaught, this does not look good for the UK game market.
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 8:26PM Cletus VanDamme said
On the bright side this means I'll be running into fewer annoying Brits when pulling an all nighter.
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Posted: Jan 12th 2012 10:51PM (Unverified) said
On one hand I don't like the "McShooter" series that CoD has become, but then at the same time Activision is making enormous amounts of money on this formula, so you can't really blame them for not changing it up. Either way when CoD stops being the big sexy, there'll just be another series to take its place for everyone to either love or hate.
And the world keeps on a-spinnin'...
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And the world keeps on a-spinnin'...
Posted: Jan 13th 2012 4:13PM camgaertner said
Modern Warfare 3 is just like MW2 though. -probably why it didn't get many buys. Plus, people are all hacking towards 10th prestige in MW3
http://10thprestigehack.net
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http://10thprestigehack.net
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