Call of Duty Fails to Hit #1 in its Launch Week for the First Time in 13 Years
In a rather surprising milestone, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has become the first game in the best-selling franchise not to reach #1 in the sales charts in its launch week. Data from the UK retail sales chart (one of the only publicly-available sources for game sales), show that the game was beaten in its launch week by Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
Call of Duty Sales Fall Behind Assassin’s Creed
For the last thirteen years, every new Call of Duty game has dominated the sales charts at launch, easily taking the #1 spot for its first week, if not longer. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, however, has failed to achieve this accolade. This is due to the extremely successful launch week of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which launched two days prior.
It’s important to note that, at present, UK retail sales figures are the only source of sales data currently available. Digital figures should be available in the near future, and they may tell a different story; while gamers have been trending towards digital purchases consistently for years now, COVID has dramatically accelerated that trend. The retail sales figures are certainly significant, but these days, they may not be representative of the wider market. Indeed, Activision has claimed that Black Ops Cold War; “set a new record as the highest first day digital sales worldwide in franchise history.”
That is a strong claim to suggest that the game has performed very well digitally; possibly better than Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. We will have to wait and see when digital sales figures from the UK emerge later this week. (Note that almost no data is publicly available for US game sales, unlike data available in the UK.) However, while Cold War likely did out-perform its retail sales on digital storefronts, Valhalla may have done so as well.
The new Assassin’s Creed title has enjoyed enormous sales success in its launch week. Indeed, it achieved more than double the sales of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey! On the other hand, Black Ops Cold War saw a huge 64% drop from the launch week sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare last year; not a great sign overall. Again, it’s possible that heightened digital sales may make this up, but it’s not guaranteed. Whatever the case, the game’s thirteen-year streak of being #1 – in retail sales at least – has been brought to an end.