Activision says "Call of Duty" not Immune to industry wide drop in pre-orders

Game pre-orders are on the decline, Activision stated in an earnings call today.

Speaking in the call, Activision publishing president and CEO Eric Hirshberg said that a downturn in pre-orders is being experienced throughout the industry and results from a number of factors, such as, "increased digital consumption, particularly on the next-gen consoles, titles being widely available on day one, and the decline overall of demand for software on previous-gen consoles."

According to Hirshberg, Activision's Call of Duty series is "not immune" to the effects of the downturn. "However, within that context, we still expect for Call of Duty to lead the industry in pre-orders once again this year," he added. "We look to other metrics as well, and we're seeing a lot of strength in those metrics... It's important to note that pre-orders are just one data point that we look at in determining the momentum of a franchise like this."

Based on such metrics, Hirshberg stated that purchase intent for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is "significantly above" that of Call of Duty: Ghosts, and is on track with the publisher's past top performing games, despite having not yet revealed details for the game's multiplayer mode.