Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be the “largest next-gen title in history” by a wide margin

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which officially launched yesterday, will go on to become the “largest next-gen title in history” by a “wide margin”, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg has told investors during an overnight earnings call.

“[On Monday] we launched the Day Zero edition, a special 24-hour early access SKU with additional digital content for our most dedicated fans. And our day one sales began this morning at midnight. While it’s obviously too early to predict the game’s ultimate sales performance, we’re very pleased with our initial Day Zero results and were emboldened by a number of key indicators,” said Hirshberg.

“Advanced Warfare was the most pre-ordered game of the year and so far has the highest game ranking of the last 3 Call of Duty titles. Furthermore, our quantitative research shows purchase intent numbers that are well above last year’s at this time. And Nielsen’s unaided first choice, Call of Duty leads the industry.

“We expect that Advanced Warfare will go on to become the biggest game of the year, the most digitally purchased game in console history and the largest next-gen title in history. And all of those by wide margins.”

Hirshberg went on to praise dev studio Sledgehammer Games and the benefits of moving to a three-year cycle for Call of Duty.

“Our highly acclaimed internal studio Sledgehammer Games has brought significant innovations across every game mode, a great story and dramatically improved graphics,” he said. “And our upcoming season of digital content will offer players more than ever before. This is the first year out of — of our 3-year development strategy on the Call of Duty franchise, and we feel that strategy has paid off with Advanced Warfare and will continue to pay off in years to come.”

You can hear what we think of the game in the video below.

Source: Activision Earnings Call via Seeking Alpha