This gen has been alot more successful on the digital front than last gen so expect year on year sales falling with big MP type games. Without accurate numbers from downloads we can't say the Genre is falling. Most of those games above probably have 1m+ more on the digital side alone.

Sales nunbers are also alot harder to track. Many last gen titles could have been bundled alot more compared to this gen which leads to misleading sales comparisons aswell. Id say if a franchise is selling over 5m both Pshyical and digital id say its healthy. Weather its in decline is debatable because more sales doesnt always lead to more successful. Depends how its sold, what it sold, the profit of the game is a better indicater than "this game sold 8m and this game sold 4m" because that game that sold 4m might be real customers and made more profit where as a game that sold 8m could have been give aways, bundles, discounted etc.

Even if we add 1M digital sales, most of the big hitters are far from what they sold previously. I understand some bundles may have boosted artificially some titles, but overall it's hard to not see a general decreasing trend. Let's look at CoD games for example, the latest release did not even manage to sell as much as CoD4. Far Cry being the exception to the rule.

It's a generational thing. The mainstream Madden/COD "dude bros' are growing up and getting out of gaming.

Overall they're still doing good.

Yeah, every genre has its peak back in the 90's it was platformer, then it was racing, then shooters...

Still doing good, but not great as it did in the past.

Splatoon too

Superhot is a huge surprise hit, too

They all have something in common which all those in the graph don't: They ain't grim and gritty military shooters. I'd say FPS as a whole are fine, it's the military shooters which are bleeding customers because apart from the occasional setting change, everything stays (too much) the same and the market got oversaturated by having them left, right, front and center all the time, creating apathy to them over time.

Franchise fatigue definitely in COD and Halo. They've been around a long time, changed developers, and haven't innovated enough or brought enough 'new' things to the table past their break out games.

Battlefield 1, given it's only a 2016 title, both titles still in the top 40 per week and given digital is anywhere from 20-30%, it could even outperform Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is a cross gen title landing in 2013, you have to consider the timing, the sales base was split almost evenly between this gen and last gen. I think the graph needs to be longer to establish any meaningful results for this franchise.

With just a cursory look at the numbers though, it would appear as though the FPS genre is seeing a much bigger decline in NA than in Europe. It would be very interesting to see a comparison graph for these franchises growth or contraction in NA and in Europe.

In fact COD:BO3 (PS4) is the highest selling FPS in Europe. Ever.

I'm starting to think there's a correltation to console sales, but I'll need to have a closer look.

This is an interesting peak at sales data but, as others have stated, does not necessarily represent the entirety of the genre. A more representative statement about the FPS genre would be that the old, non-innovative franchises are experiencing fatigue (as they should be), but not the genre as a whole.

I was thinking Splatoon but Splatoon is not first person hence why I didn't bring it up. I agree though: military setting just feels very played-out. Gotta have new and unique character: Overwatch has this as does Splatoon .