Call of Duty: Ghosts is out now; here’s our Call of Duty: Ghosts review.
I haven’t pre-ordered a new console yet. I’m umming and ahhing between the promise of more Forza, and Killzone’s Crysis-like makeover – while a nagging voice in my head tells me that neither box is nearly different enough to the PC I already have.
I’m not alone, it seems, and the fence-straddling is taking its toll on Call of Duty’s usual pre-order haul.
“As one might expect in this console transition year,” said publishing president Eric Hirshberg, who knows how to ease jumpy shareholders into bad news, “pre-orders for Call of Duty: Ghosts are well below the record-setting pace set by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 last year.”
Hirshberg cited “quantitative consumer research” by the publisher, which reportedly suggests that “hesitation amongst past CoD pre-orderers is primarily due to not knowing which platform they’ll be playing on, which is natural at this time in the console transition.”
Honestly, I’m just pleased to hear I’m not the only person who resorts to neologising the word ‘pre-orderers’.
Clever Hirshberg didn’t stop there though, pointing out that Ghosts pre-orders are over double those of the first Black Ops – the last Call of Duty game Activision launched as a ‘sub-brand’.
Disconcertingly, he also promised the “most aggressive marketing, retail, and digital programs in the history of the franchise” – presumably all growling dogs and returning Replacers. So there’s that to look forward to.
Series scaremongers will be disappointed to note that CoD’s digital sales up til June 30 have actually broken previous records – as have sales of Black Ops 2 itself when compared to Modern Warfare 3 during the same period last year. Or they would be, if they’d bothered to read past the headline.
I guess we can say whatever we like about scaremongers down here, huh?