Gamer's Guide to Life.com, Tuesday 19th April 2011: Call of Duty veteran Chris Hawke makes a strong argument as to why the next major title in the Call of Duty franchise should revolve around Simo Häyhä, the humble Finnish hero of the Winter War famed for both his lack of self-serving flash and his incredibly impressive talent for warfare.
GGTL: "That's what Call of Duty needs. Not bigger set-pieces or more explosions or louder guns; it needs to be grounded. It needs to take a long look at itself, see the error of its arrogant ways, and work on making a better game - a cleverer game, using personal tactics to gain the edge over the enemy, rather than just doing the same thing every single time."
Cheat software provider EngineOwning will pay Call of Duty creator Activision nearly $15 million in damages and legal fees.
This is what developers and manufacturers should do. I know going after cheat devices/makers is a cat and mouse game, and cost money. However, they can get that money back by sueing these manufacturers of cheat devices. Take a page from Nintendo's playbook.
Discover the impact of Microsoft's decision to include Call Of Duty in Game Pass. Explore the pros and cons and speculate about future changes.
Most folks that have a Gamepass subscription will not spend the $70, they will use Gamepass instead to play COD. MS will most likely make their money from some solely PC players & some solely PS5 owners. Even some PC players may opt to use Gamepass instead of spending $70. I would think MS would want to make every dime they could from retail sales. As long as they put new releases of COD day one on Gamepass, MS will lose out on some sales of COD.
COD makes truck loads of money on microtransactions. That's likely the play. Get more people in the door through Game Pass and sell more microtransactions. Have a steady stream of events to keep people interested so they keep their sub, and then just the sub alone would double the revenue from that player each year.
Buying the game at $70 a pop including the deluxe versions is much better than people subs for a dollar to $15 a month. Die hard fans that usually buy the game also buy into the transactions. Again putting any new COD day one on Gamepass is definitely a sure loss of making some retail money for every copy of COD. With the last iteration of COD being bad most likely people are going to sub to Gamepass to play COD basically saving themselves $70, that is a loss of retail sales.
Most that don't have Gamepass will just buy the game and he done with it. People that do will just result in a retail sale being lost. Some will buy the subscription for the month then be done. This is lose lose. Casuals aren't going to pay almost 300 dollars a year for COD.
The reality is that Microsoft already knows the answer as stated by them in their documents. PlayStation gamers have built up an ecosystem of games and they aren't migrating over and dropping what they have to buy an Xbox to play one game in a service you have to pay monthly for. Cheaper to just buy the game. And, I'd bet many casual COD players don't know or care about the acquisition.
Which is why Jim Ryan pushed to make sure that that one game continues to be sold as usual on Sony's platform to keep the status quo. Every other IP owned by Activision are worthless. And Activision has shown they don't care about other IP like Tony Hawk by cancelling them.
Sales WILL be lost on Xbox. That's for certain. Microsoft can only hope that Xbox gamers continue to buy up those micro transactions to make up for those lost sales. Only positive for Microsoft is that they get to dip into PlayStation game sales that we all know from history and NPD, that Sony's console sells more games. But increase subs from Sony fans for game pass? Not happening in any way that matters.
Sony, on the other hand, can have their cake and eat it too. They get COD and they can continue dropping more content for their fastest selling GaaS game which is Hell Divers 2. As the game passes 12 million sales and doesn't beat you over the head with micro transactions, Sony has a win win situation and can support the game getting more content to keep players engaged.
As a side note, COD is probably going to turn into some version of Sea of Fortnite Duty. Games as a service sitting in game pass being milked dry with micro transactions and constant updates making you feel you're playing an unfinished game that keeps going and going with no soul.
I'm not sure why everyone is acting like COD is a surprise. That was always the plan. They said in court during the FTC case they were doing this. They have said repeatedly and recently all first party games are going to Gamepass.
gamepass like PS Plus are rental services. Games like COD you buy not rent. So in my case unless I plan on keeping gamepass for 2yrs minimum than the benefit of adding cod is pointless.
We've put together 5 reasons why we believe the arrival of the Call of Duty franchise on Xbox Game Pass will be a big deal for Microsoft.
I think this is an interesting concept. Call of Duty as a more pared-down, down-to-earth game could work fantastically well at somewhat shaking up the formula, but I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't ever consider adding any sort of more tactical or non-bravado-fuelled game mechanic as I expect that it would alienate much of their current (astoundingly large) audience.
That accessibility is, I think, what accounts for alot of Call of Duty's success. And I think that adding any sort of more tactical or down-to-earth, lacking-in-splosions-and-bulle ts-and-gore mechanic might risk losing that accessibility.
I like the idea though, and a storyline revolving around Simo Häyhä and the Winter War would be fantastically interesting and original.
It would be nice to play a Call of Duty that in no way (or at least only loosely) involves Americans.
Finland FTW
Whilst a more grounded COD would be nice, I think people have grown used to big OTT set-pieces, and ridiculous antics from their Call of Duty games, so I'm not sure how well it would work.