For years now, through thick and thin, one thing has remained constant in this business: every holiday season, a new Call of Duty game arrives and outsells the last one.
Except for this year, that is, because it looks like 2011's Modern Wafare 3 will, at the rate things are going, sell less copies than 2010's Black Ops.
Analysts at Macquarie Equities, presumably having seen internal sales figures since they're dealing with percentage points, say that as it stands MW3 is trailing sales of Black Ops by "around 4.2 percent", Gamasutra reports.
It's hardly a dramatic slide, and it's also a relative thing since MW3 still sold millions, but it's a slide nonetheless. If the same happens next year with the release of what we assume will be Black Ops 2, it might be time for Activision to start thinking a little bit harder about how they mix things up with these games.
Call of Duty sales slow down as casual buyers find entertainment elsewhere [Gamasutra]