Call of Duty franchise has become “review-proof”, continues to sell regardless of reviews

Call of Duty: Ghosts was met with pretty bad reviews for what is touted as the biggest FPS in the world. Review scores fell behind EA’s Battlefield 4, and many sites called Ghosts a “step backward in the franchise”.

But, that doesn’t affect sales numbers, according to a new report from  Doug Creutz of Cowen & Company, who notes that while Metacritic scores for Call of Duty: Ghosts are hovering around the 74. Regardless of what the reviewers say of Ghosts, Call of Duty will continue to sell at an enormous rate.

“We think CoD has become such an embedded franchise that it is somewhat review-proof,” he said. “We think of CoD as being like EA’s Madden NFL, which continues to sell similar unit numbers year in and year out, regardless of reviews; Madden’s Metacritic has ranged as low as 78 in recent years. Given that CoD changes only incrementally from year to year, we think reviewers have become increasingly less likely to give very high review scores due to a certain degree of ennui with the franchise.”

Even though Battlefield 4 exceeded Ghosts in reviews, that game isn’t selling very much for current-gen. The analyst says that Call of Duty’s biggest competition will be coming in Spring 2014 with Destiny (an Activision game) and Titanfall (EA’s game).

“Our concern lies more with next year, when Call of Duty will face competition from several new next-gen shooters, including EA’s Titanfall and Activision’s own Destiny,” said the analyst.

SOURCE: GiBiz