Activision Hopeful ‘Call Of Duty’ Will Eventually Outsell ‘Grand Theft Auto V’

The video game industry has been a little unstable with its expectations in the last few years. Several top franchise games failed to meet lofty revenue goals – despite selling very well in their own right. Resident Evil 6 was deemed to have “fallen short of the plan” despite selling several million copies. Tomb Raider, which sold 3.8 million copies at the time of the report, was deemed an “extraordinary loss” by Square Enix. Some blame the high expectations on Call of Duty with companies pumping more and more money into their games to try and replace the military shooter as one of the industry’s most consistent sellers.

Funnily enough, now it seems like Activision might be beginning to overestimate what is feasible for the series. Just a few weeks ago Grand Theft Auto V became the most successful entertainment franchise ever. Making $1 billion in just 3 days, the success of the game was extraordinary. Prior to that, Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most successful video game title and it seems like Activision isn’t willing to let that record go just yet.

In a conversation with MCV, Activision’s UK senior brand manager Kevin Flynn said that the company has desires to be top dog by the time Grand Theft Auto 6 is out.

“Congratulations to the team at Rockstar for their success, We look forward to getting the record back before the next GTA title”

While Call of Duty remains one of the industry’s most consistent moneymakers, it has begun to see a slow decline in sales over the last few years. On top of that, Activision revealed that the number of pre-orders for Call of Duty: Ghosts have been a little lower than expected – subsequently blaming the discrepancy on confusion over the next generation launch. Piling the odds against the game even further, this year they’ll be up against Battlefield 4, which is expected to be chasing sales records as well.

Despite all that against the game, Activision is confident that Call of Duty: Ghostswill be a major success and that it will beat all of their immediate competitors. Flyn iterated that by saying:


“We know that our unaided awareness for Ghosts is leading the way against other unreleased triple-A titles. Our digital content has proven extremely popular and Black Ops II has sold more than 3m units in the UK.”

Call of Duty: Ghosts has a lot to overcome if it wants to even come close to GTA V‘s sales numbers. Even so, Activision seems confident that even if it isn’t Call of Duty: Ghosts, their flagship franchise will hold the record again by the time Rockstar release the next game in the Grand Theft Auto series.

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Call of Duty: Ghosts releases November 5, 2013 for the PC, PS3, Wii U, and Xbox 360; November 15th for the PS4; and November 22nd for the Xbox One.