This shouldn’t really be surprising to many, considering the leap in tech and gameplay was minimal at best between each Call of Duty instalments, but it’s a big news nonetheless.

Call of Duty sales are slowing down, and rapidly. Modern Warfare 3 has failed to beat Black Ops’ sales for the year, and is down by 4.2 percent.

This is according to the analysts at Macquarie Equities. If you remember Modern Warfare 3 actually beat Black Ops’ week 1 sales and brought approx. $700 million in revenue for Activison, but the month after that, i.e., December was where the game failed to match Black Ops in sales and continued downward the trend for the year.

Earlier we had reported that Modern Warfare 3 had sold 50% less than Black Ops did in January 2011, and it had recorded 386,000 sales compared to 750,000 units shifted by Black Ops in the month.

It looks like the interest for the game was significantly lower compared to Black Ops, and looks like the casual audience moved on to something else (like they usually do).

It remains to be seen how Activision responds to this or whether next-gen will result in a change of fortunes for them.

This may be good news to many people who loathe the franchise, but whatever it is, Activision has done something incredible this gen and many franchises can’t even think of generating such revenue in a short time as the Call of Duty franchise has done.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Via Gamasutra.