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COD:Ghosts released last Tuesday and a week has passed so we get to look at another set of release numbers for launch week. I’m a numbers guy and I have been tracking peak players stats for the PC ever since the series started going downhill (feature wise) with Modern Warfare 2. The continuing decline on the PC platform over the last few years is a little depressing for someone that loves the series as much as I do but with the release of COD:Ghosts I have to admit I am a little shocked by how staggering the numbers are. There was a lot of talk (or at least more than normal) prior to release by Infinity Ward that actually made it sound like from the development side there was just a little bit of extra effort being put into the PC version this time around but from what it seems like that was just smoke and mirrors and in reality COD:Ghosts is just another stripped down Infinity Ward version of Call of Duty for the PC. Once again the potential is there but with so many standard pieces left out it looks like a risk so many just aren’t interested in taking this time around.

Actual sales numbers will paint a better picture once some more time has passed and I will be looking at them but for now we will just look at Steam “peak player count” stats for the first “launch week” in comparison to past years. I think most understand the Steam player stats but just to clarify; this isn’t the total number of players playing the game on a given day but it is merely just the “peak” number of players playing at a specific time of a day (usually around 3:00 EST). Not complete data by any means but it is a very good representation of the games direction – and a general idea of how well the game was received or sales went.

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MW2 BO MW3 BO2 GHOSTS
DAY 1 64,367 76,748 58,234 11,093 35,583
DAY 2 101,368 92,903 76,307 51,240 36,901
DAY 3 105,248 97,445 78,161 53,095 35,353
DAY 4 108,618 104,233 78,648 54,705 36,016
DAY 5 99,846 107,367 79,162 56,340 35,723
DAY 6 98,632 118,593 86,832 60,191 37,268
DAY 7 97,947 105,907 78,945 64,015 31,452
DAY 8 97,585 98,578 74,930 54,644 28,878

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I am showing 8 days for the simple fact that on launch day the numbers are generally all over the place due to launch times & when people are getting into the game for the first time. Also keep in mind that some prefer to play Single Player before starting Multiplayer. However; you will notice that COD:Ghosts is already dipping into the 20K numbers with today’s peak and that is definitely not good for longevity down the road even short term.

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With Black Ops 2 (and some previous COD titles) I suffer a lot from the “just one more game” syndrome but with COD:Ghosts I just don’t get that – at all. The game just feels so mundane that after a few games I can easily say that I have had my fix and just walk away from the game – pretty much the same exact feeling that I got with Modern Warfare 3. The experience in the game just feels kind of flat with the weapons & weapon customization, Killstreaks and available game modes – with total lack of classic game modes probably being my biggest issue. I’m just not very interested in playing any of the available game modes and therefore my level of excitement drops rather quickly. As some others are saying; maybe it will get better with some updates, fixes and support but I have my doubts. If there are others feeling the same way I am about it right now and nothing drastic does happen I think this will be the most rapid declining PC release yet. Only time will tell.