So, yes, this was just released. Circana has declared Modern Warfare 2019 as the best-selling Call of Duty game on the PlayStation platform in the United States. Really now, incidence of high-rank sales and units sold equivalently. Quite an interesting thing to consider.
It came out in 2019. In the years after, there have been four or five COD games in the list. And it keeps hanging on top of the selling charts. That clearly says something, right? Or, maybe, not so much. The reactions streaming in following this news are pretty…A big peek into how divided the COD community remains.
Pro: The lovers. Player arnaud41466 gloriously says, “Best cod!!!” with great hope for a Modern Warfare 4 that builds on the footsteps of Modern Warfare 2019. MolinaBr8008 said he’d “never leave” if they mixed MW2019 maps with MW3 movement. This love does, in fact, exist for some.
Then come the haters. I swear they were all just waiting for this news just to throw their venom. Zemphfy_ called it an “one of the worst games” and, really, her reasoning was, I guess the game became really popular just because of the free Warzone mode, i.e., “numbers don’t mean nothing if it’s free.” Ouch. Generalorgasm made a classic impression once again by chiming in with “Dead game for incels.” Charming.
The text-book-around debate that followed in the replies is indeed the eternal COD debate. It’s as if people are playing totally different games. Some praise the gunplay and customization, whilst others are listing every single thing they despise. One user, Aron (@SaloMinSondon), laid out a whole indictment: “Introduced doors, removed red dots on mini map, terrible maps, introduced strong SBMM, introduced disbanding lobbies, introduced store bundles…” This is an entire manifesto of complaints.
Then there are these specific arguments about game mechanics. LAKERICE420 and Cry0Gaming got into a whole argument over Dead Silence: how long it lasted, and whether it refreshed upon kills. These geeky little details that only the most hardcore players even notice…let alone argue about on Twitter.
Interestingly, that is only a success story in the PlayStation sphere. According to chikinbizkitJR, “That doesn’t mean it’s the best-selling COD of all time across all platforms. That honor is apparently still Black Ops 3, so you have to wonder: how do player preferences align with platform splits?”
Meanwhile, the placement of other games on this list is kind of funny. Insanegamer52 commented, “Every black ops title being on both of these lists is actually crazy,” and it sure is-the Black Ops series has serious staying power. And zordanlee, meanwhile, was surprised to find that MW3 is the “lowest selling” in the Warzone era, calling it “by far the best game cycle we’ve had.” And it proves how sales numbers and player opinions never really align.
At the end of the day, regardless of the love or distaste for this game, Modern Warfare 2019 shook the scene up. It brought back a franchise everybody loves, brought in Warzone which turned everything on its head, and now sits at the peak of PlayStation sales. That’s huge for a half-decade-old game. One has to wonder what really was so right about it from Infinity Ward, or maybe so controversial that they’re talking about it even now.
Could have been the gritty realism. Could have been all the gunsmith customization everybody adored. Or maybe it was just timing. Whatever it was, a lot of people liked it. The people that didn’t? They’re also talking about it. That, in a code word, pretty much translates to true success in the Call of Duty sphere-everybody’s got an opinion, and nobody sits down.
So yes, Modern Warfare 2019 is the king of PlayStation COD sales. For now. Who knows what the next game will do, or whether any of them will ever break that record. But for a little sting, just look at how this game from 2019 is still stirring so much dialogue. That doesn’t happen too often in the yearly release cycle of this franchise. So bad or good, Modern Warfare 2019 left a mark. And really? Now that’s more than most games can say for themselves.
