CoD Modern Warfare 3 ripped to shreds by users as physical sales fall short of predecessor

Modern Warfare 3 is proving to be a controversial sequel

Things aren’t off to a fabulous start for Call of Duty under the aegis of Microsoft, as the newly launched Modern Warfare 3 is being ripped to shreds by both critics and users for its terrible campaign and awful price-to-content ratio.

Our own Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review called the game an “all-around disappointment” and noted that the game feels more like a DLC for Warzone than anything else, but sold at an exorbitant price. Other critics and even the players, who are usually blindly loyal to the series, seem to concur, according to the game’s ratings on Metacritic.

Modern Warfare 3 is drowning in criticism / Activision Blizzard

Currently, the first-person shooter is sitting on a critic score of 50 with the highest rating from a site being a 70. That’s nothing compared to the wrath of users, however, who at this point have given the game a score of just 1.4 of 10, signifying an “Overwhelming Dislike” of the title.

This disappointment seems to be represented in terms of the sales numbers as well, at least from the early data available so far. Gaming business-focused journalist Christopher Dring reported that the physical sales of Modern Warfare 3 in the UK are 25% lower than for the game’s predecessor in the same timeframe since release.

While physical sales go down more and more as digital sales take over the market, 25% is seemingly too big a jump as to explain it with that trend alone. When it comes to platform distribution, all seems normal: 72% of the recorded purchases were for PS5 with PS4 falling down to just 8% – perhaps a sign that last-gen can be left behind in the near future when it comes to new releases. 20% of the physical sales came from the Xbox version.

Digital data from the UK will be out later this week, so this somewhat bleak picture could very well change – it’s definitely possible that there was a large migration from physical to digital sales this year.

Diablo 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 won’t come to Xbox Game Pass in 2023