According to stats released from the NPD Group, Call of Duty has continued its sales resurgence thanks to Modern Warfare. Infinity Ward’s latest entry into the FPS franchise was the top-selling game of February 2020 despite releasing last October.
February 2020 saw no new releases enter the top 20 of the US’ best-sellers, which allowed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to reclaim its crown, most likely helped by the release of its second content season.
The top five was rounded out by NBA 2K20, Grand Theft Auto 5, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot and The Division 2, which was on sale for as little as $3.
NPD said that overall software sales were down 36 percent compared to this time last year but believe that’s due to a far slower release period, with no major titles released in February as developers begin to prepare for the next generation of home consoles.
Currently, figures aren’t available for March, but CoD will be in for much tougher competition as it faces some big names like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX and Doom Eternal.
But the franchise isn’t out of the running yet. Call of Duty has its own new release. Call of Duty: Warzone released in mid-March and has so far proven to be massively popular.
Within its first 10 days, Call of Duty’s take on battle royale had recorded over 30 million players across all platforms. Those numbers will probably continue to rise as the game grows in popularity day by day. And, with a remastered Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 reportedly ‘in the works’, who knows where this successful franchise could end up?
That said, it faces serious competition from Doom Eternal for the title of Best Selling Game in March. This classic has proven to be a smash hit. Following the release weekend of id Software’s hellraising first-person shooter the game’s publisher – Bethesda – announced:
“Doom Eternal has quickly broken the franchise record for opening weekend sales, doubling the launch revenue of DOOM (2016). DOOM Eternal was the best-selling game on Steam for the week and immediately soared to over 100,000 concurrent players on the platform.”
Doom, as with other games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Call of Duty Warzone, has most likely benefitted from the ever-increasing number of lockdowns and quarantines spreading across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, meaning NPD may well be reporting a surge of software sales for the next month.
Featured Image Credit – Activision