‘Call Of Duty’ Fatigue Overblown? ‘Black Ops 3’ Rated As Top Buy For Gamers This Year

Sales of the Call of Duty franchise have not done as well since Black Ops in 2010. This has led some to believe that gamer fatigue with the annual series has steadily set in. A new survey of gamers released Thursday by analyst firm Piper Jaffray disputes the fatigue argument, though, as a survey pegged Black Ops III as the title gamers are most excited for this year.

Piper Jaffray conducted multiple surveys throughout the year. The first survey was done with more than 300 Xbox One and PlayStation 4 owners earlier in the year, with another conducted with twice the number of participants in March. The firm then gauged interest following all of the holiday 2015 announcements at E3 in June, and Black Ops III was still the top dog for upcoming console titles.

“Call of Duty remained the title that gamers were ‘most excited’ to buy in 2015, albeit at a modestly lower percentage,” Piper Jaffray Analyst Michael Olsen commented. “However, we do not view the slight decline as material and more the result of numerous new game announcements at E3. We believe the survey does provide further indication that concern around Call of Duty ‘franchise fatigue’ is overblown.”

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was the best-selling game of 2014, but November NPD sales figures for the game showed a 27 percent year-over-year decline compared with Call of Duty: Ghosts. This was physical sales only, but digital sales were likely not strong enough to make up for the gap, as Piper Jaffray noted at the time.

On the other hand, 2014 saw a 13 percent total decline in physical game sales (via CNBC), as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 nosedived at the end of their lifecycle while the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One install base is still relatively small. Again, digital sales make up part of the drop, but not the entire number.

Still, the excitement for Call of Duty: Black Ops III is understandable. This will be the first Treyarch-produced game for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The studio has also established itself as the big cheese among the three studios, thanks to Black Ops and its sequel, combined with Infinity Ward’s fall from grace due to Ghosts and Modern Warfare 3.

The holiday 2015 lineup of games is strong as it has ever been, with multiple third-party titles set for a release this year such as Fallout 4, Star Wars: Battlefront, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Rock Band 4, Need for Speed, and more. There’s also first-party titles like Halo 5: Guardians, Forza Motorsport 6, and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection to contend with.

Are you excited for Black Ops III, or are you fatigued by the Call of Duty series? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Call of Duty: Black Ops III]