Recently there were several postings online and on Social Media touting how Hogwarts Legacy outsold Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and how this was a rare instance of a title beating that franchise in yearly sales.
I debated doing a response for it but thought that it was needed as this is a prime example of what has become the norm in our industry; a sensational headline that is lacking proper context.
Hogwarts Legacy shipped in February while Modern Warfare III came out with only a few weeks left in the year. While this has not been an issue for the franchise of late to capture the yearly sales title, Hogwarts’s having a roughly ten-month head start in sales does tend to put things in a different perspective.
Combine this with the fact that it was widely known that there were not originally plans to release a new Call of Duty game this year and instead do another year of seasonal content which would include a campaign expansion.
The maps for the game at release were all remastered versions of Cal of Duty 3 content which were bundled with the expansion campaign content to make a new release which further underscores that this was not the usual release that fans have expected from the franchise.
While this in no way takes away from the tremendous response that Hogwarts Legacy had and how it paid great fan service to the franchise, it is hard to objectively overlook the months of advances sales time it had to run up the numbers before Modern Warfare III was even released to the market.
I believe that a better indicator of sales should be based on a monthly average or twelve-month window as would anyone want to be evaluated for their production over a few weeks versus someone who had the advantage of a multiple month head start?
I am sure by the time all the cosmetic purchases are factored in Activision will be happy with the final sales for Modern Warfare III and even if they lag behind other releases in the franchise; it is again important to remember that it is not the usual release for the game and as such it would be expected for it to not perform at the same level as brand new content across the board that was created to be a full new release versus a bundle.
It is always amazing to me how fans are so quick to bash Call of Duty and have jumped all over the difference in sales between the two releases without offering any proper context. The best response would be to say that both companies released games that sold well and that one had a significant amount of lead time over the other.
In the end unless you work for or hold stock in either company, does it really matter who sold more as the main things is that gamers got two releases that a good number of fans enjoyed.
