Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-decline-of-call-of-duty-2013-11
While not as big as "Grand Theft Auto," the "Call Of Duty" franchise is one of the few series in video games that can be expected to have a smash hit with every release.
That holds true for the latest entry in the series, "Call of Duty: Ghosts." As Kotaku's Owen Good notes, retailers ordered a billion dollars worth of copies from Activision for the holiday season. On top of that, many copies will likely be sold in the digital stores available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
There's only one place where the series seems to no longer thrive: the PC, the bastion of hardcore gamers and the platform where "Call of Duty" got its start in 2003.
Steam is a digital store and gaming platform created by Valve and embraced by most of the PC gaming community. Valve collects (with permission) a massive amount of data about gamers on its platform, including the specs of their systems and what they're playing. SteamGraph is a tool that lets you manipulate and look at that data.
Below is a chart of the number of active players over time for every entry in the series going back to "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2." As you can see, the peak number of active players has steadily declined with each release, falling over 60% in just three years.
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