An in-depth look at Call of Duty's pre-order sales suggests that Advanced Warfare will be the lowest-selling entry of the series in the past seven years.

GamesIndustry reports that a pre-order sales analysis by Cowen and Company suggests that the overall declining sales numbers for the Call of Duty series will continue with its latest entry, Advanced Warfare. This upcoming COD title is expected to sell more than 70 percent less than Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 from 2012 and 40 percent less than last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts. Cowen and Company claim that the Call of Duty franchise has peaked and that its best days are long gone.

"Advanced Warfare is now pacing almost 40 per cent behind last year's Ghosts (versus 50 per cent last week) and almost 70 per cent behind 2012's Black Ops 2 (versus 80 per cent last week)," Cowen and Co.'s report stated. "We continue to believe CoD will be down meaningfully versus last year. With the franchise facing two consecutive significant year on year declines in sales, we think it is prudent to assume it has peaked."

Despite these declining numbers, Cowen and Company still expects Advanced Warfare to outsell Destiny, which was the most pre-ordered new IP of all time. Destiny is expect to hit the 12-13 million units sold threshold within its first 12 months, with a possibility that it could even hit 15 million due to the changes made to the game and the inevitable release of its DLC expansions. The idea that Advanced Warfare could still outsell Destiny reiterates the series' viability in the gaming industry.

Cowen and Co. mention that pre-orders sales are no longer important gauges of long-term, overall sales. Despite how much Activision has boosted about the pre-ordered sales numbers of its two new IPs, Watch Dogs and Destiny, COD pre-orders are still significantly on the decline. Cowen and Co. believe that overall pre-order numbers are down due to digital downloads and gaming clients like Steam, whose numbers have been steadily rising throughout the past few years.

It also could be that people are legitimately tired of the yearly incarnation of Call of Duty where not much gets changed going from game to game. Yes, Advanced Warfare is the most different entry of the series yet, but the damage is already done. Mix in the very public departures of Jason West, Vince Zampella and their team members are Infinity Ward in 2010 with the series' lack of innovation since their dismissals, and gamers may have realized that things just aren't as good anymore and Activision will keep churning them out.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will debut on Nov. 4 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Overall declining numbers sound right, so do these COD gun effects.

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