Call of Duty franchise is losing customers

When you hear that the Call of Duty franchise has made more money than Harry Potter, the last thing you’d expect to hear is that sales are actually on a downward trend.

Uh… What?

Yesterday, we reported that Black Ops 2 beat the billion-dollar record. It toppled the previous record held by Modern Warfare 3, by breaking the benchmark in 15 days. However, according to a recent NPD report, BlOps2 has actually sold 14% less than MW3 in its first month. This includes the 4.5 million copies sold for Xbox 360 and 2.9 million copies for PlayStation 3. BlOps sold 7.4 million total, MW3 sold 8.8 million, and Black Ops sold 8 million.

Will PC pick up the slack?

Although this does indicate a decline on console systems, the numbers don’t indicate the amount of sales in the PC market, which is increasingly more difficult to observe because of downloads and online stores.

And although these numbers might show a drop in sales overall, it is not indicative of future sales. It’s possible that we will see a trend back upward, especially with the next generation of consoles on their way toward release.