Activision claims Call of Duty franchise is on the way up

In a recent interview, Activision's CEO Eric Hirshberg, claims the Call of Duty series is on the way up.

[RaidensRising]

The vibes I'm getting is COD is going down. The comparison to Guitar Hero is a fair one. Put too much out there and it saturates and stagnates, people get bored and move on to other games.

[IM_A_NINJA]

You are trying to compare a niche game like Guitar Hero, which never sold on the level that Call Of Duty has.

They are two very different IP's. Each COD has outsold the last, so technically that is on the way up. Doesn't matter if you are personally getting it or not. It also doesn't matter if you don't like COD or not. The facts are there to support what he is claiming.

Modern Warfare 3 is outpacing Black Ops in pre orders. The formula is all right there, please keep in mind that the people that do all the talking in places like N4G, are the MINORITY. I'm not saying I love COD, but I'm at least objective and call it like I see it.

@TheHooligan
Obviously you missed the article that Madden just sold over 1.4 million copies in it's first week of release.

Not every game has to bring something new. People love Uncharted, Uncharted 3 probably wont bring anything new to the series, does that mean they shouldn't release it?

I honestly think they should just stop calling Modern Warfare "Call Of Duty". I think people often get caught up in the yearly release and don't realize COD is actually on a 2 year cycle, just like a lot of other quality games.

I just think people here like to hate on it, so you wont see a lot of people listening to reason.

[RaidensRising]

It's not about Guitar Hero being niche, it's about over saturation of a product. we're getting yearly releases now, extra map packs from all fronts, and now the entire thing wrapped up in a neat package called Elite.

Sure, these are extras but the core game hasn't really moved forwards that much. Gamers like it in their numbers now but that doesn't mean it's good or innovative, or moving in any positive direction other than lining Eric and Activision's pockets.

Eric claims no complacency - I totally disagree with his corporate rhetoric.

Call of Duty is the Madden of first person military shooters.

[malol]

in the sales front
COD cant get any bigger
but since they are this much way up
there is only one way to go now
and that is Down

and its not the matter of how its a matter of when
nothing can stay on top forever
NOTHING

[gamingdroid]

Well said!

I completely agree.

[theonlylolking]

I am suprised that you have not been marked trolling yet for that comment. I make a comment that means the same thing and it is marked trolling. Maybe its because of how I say it?

[Hicken]

Problem: there are two football games a year. One is professional, one is college.

There are dozens of shooters a year, and a Call of Duty is present every year, along with new map packs every month or so. That's why the over-saturation.

[Washington-Capitals]

Madden, Fifa, Assassins Creed are just some franchise that release EVERY year and still manage to sell millions and millions. If anything the product/substance of those games have changed FAR less then Call of Duty but still people flock to buy. So how come i dont see people complaining about those games?

Sad fact of the matter is, FPS is the most popular genre in gaming right now and the top dog is COD. You cant be at the top without haters.

[awi5951]

Even madden didnt sell one year and ea had to do a reboot. You cant just release the same crap each day .

[PCE]

I agree ninja, the N4G CoD haters are in the tiny minority. Well said. They spend so much time bashing a popular game on their computer when they can all easily go play their amazing games. Needless to say, I agree that Activision should give MW its own franchise and leave CoD to Trayarch's games. That should make a lot of CoD hate comments history.

[Hicken]

By all means, ignore the most glaring factor: there is only one football game, only two soccer games. These sports, themselves, haven't changed much each year, so the amount of changes you can make to the games themselves is limited; usually, it's updated rosters, improved graphics, and better presentation... all of which are addressed yearly.

And only 142857 shooters a year, with CoD at the top, influencing 285714 games. Here, CoD is the forerunner, the industry leader; it's where everyone else looks for the standard. And that standard... has become somewhat poor.

Madden= only name in genre; sadly, it can get away with stagnation.

FIFA= one of two, and tends to lose to PES in an area or two each year, spurning at least SOME change.

CoD= genre leader in an oversaturated market that has inspired many others, but doesn't change a whole lot. Somehow, that's okay?

[Ares84]

@IM_A_NINJA

You are right about everything you said but you can't deny that many people are also sick and tired of COD. I think, and I hope that this year the actual number of people will fall who purchase COD.

Also, you cannot deny that ever since COD4 every COD is the same exact game just with different SP levels and MP levels.

But same gameplay same graphics, same engine, same everything. It was cool back in the day but now it's kind of boring and old.

I got two COD's every year because I have two PS3's. One for me and one for my gf and we used to play online together with friends but this year Activision is getting 2 sales less because I won't buy MW3. Instead I'm moving on to an FPS that actually deserves my money, Battlefield 3.

[NukaCola]

I completely agree with NINJA. Look at Activision's history. Tony Hawk became popular and activision milked it to death trying to pump it for every penny and now it's completely dead 15-20 games later. Then they got Guitar Hero, and did the same thing over and over again until finally they killed off their franchise. They got a hold of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot and ruined them. You will see the same thing happed to COD. Eventually, people will get tired, the game series will die, and then activision will move like a swarm of locust to another franchise and continue the trend. This is not COD hate at all. This has almost everything to do with a company who has nothing but greed in their business. Games are are, they are fun. It's greedy evil coorperations like this that kill the industry. And now Acti is controlling Blizzard. They will go down too, and it's sad.

Im getting old of COD too, but I dont hate the game. It's the business minds surrounding it that have their priorities so far wrong. Activision is a cancer, and I hope they get stopped one day.

[Trophywhore]

The number of dislikes on recent youtube trailers shows that gamers may finally be getting some sense. I still think this game will sell pretty well though. After MW3 though, we will see a decline.

[gamingdroid]

... and the number of pre-orders? You know, people actually plunking cash down for the game? ... or what about the CoD XP weekend that was a massive success?

It's not unheard of a mass of people (fanboys?) can derail a public internet voting.

Look no further than user rating on metacritic or when Spore was downrated to a paltry 1.5 stars. It had over 3000 votes:

http://www.amazon.com/Spore...

CoD is on track to becoming the most popular, most played and most sold game of the year on consoles. Like it or not, that is what it has been the past couple of years.

[GSpartan777]

You can say the exact same thing for MW2 and Black Ops Youtube videos. Youtube dislikes mean hackshit. Why? Because it's very easy to get a group of mindless online hipsters on gaming community to sabotage. Same thing with User reviews. They mean jack shit.

[Trophywhore]

Never said dislikes are proportional to sales. I said its showing that gamers are starting to get sick of MW games. If you read past the first sentence of my post you would know that,

More proof that N4G users cant read more than one sentence without thier brain hurting.

[GSpartan777]

You didn't even have to fucking say sales. Youtube dislikes do not come close to representing a portion of gaming community. Not at all. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops went through the same thing with a massive dislike bar on youtube and people commenting "DERP DERP BF:BC2 Predicative servers what ever what ever" Pointing that out is extremely worthless. That's where gamingdroid and I throw the users rating thing at you since it's the same fucking thing. A couple of angry nerd on N4G calling the game bad or giving the game a 1/10 on meta critic does not come close to 1% of gamers.

Online hate is all talk from people who claim to play games but instead spent all their time talking shit at people for playing games they enjoy and engaging in console flame wars online.

[sarshelyam]

The game will sell well. Like Lemmings to the cliff, the fans will buy it because they're conditioned to do so...

...but BF3 has much more going for it. While it may not pull the sales, at the end of the day, it will likely be a far more satisfying experience all around.

[Flavor]

Back before they announced the 9 map limit and 24 player cap on every game mode except stupid conquest, I would agree with you on BF3.

But now, I have trouble seeing the difference... same asinine and irresponsible 'Anglo America Saves the World' story, same weapons, same time frame, same enemies (russia.. poor bastards), same gameplay minus the handful of cartoon vehicles (WW1 Biplane jet combat)...

There's so many avenues they could have traveled with BF3 and they chose the most boring f'ing one.

[caperjim]

COD is far from going down. Nothing points otherwise. Online hate talk is about it. Most of these people will be buying it anyway despite what they say. When sales figures drop by a decent margin then we can talk about COD going down. :)

[maxmill]

Its going down atleast for me unless they change their format, for all i know mw3 will be my last of the series considering TS4 should be coming out!

[cochise313]

Nah, If they build a new engine, then I'd agree. The last COD I liked was World at war surprisingly. I refuse to buy COD this year. I'm voting with my wallet; until they decide to revamp the series, I won't buy.

[Kurylo3d]

i agree.. modern warfare 2 was awesome in my opinion.. loved it more then the first, but aside from that im done with it. I was a fan of team that brought us modern warfare 2.. and lets face it.. infinity ward isnt infinity ward since it lost its core members. I will not be giving modern warfare 3 a try.. i gave black ops a try.. and that was my mistake. ModernWarfare 2 felt like a hollywood blockbuster jerry bruckheimer film... blackops felt like a corny made for tv movie... it sucked. I have a feeling modern warfare 3 will suck just as bad.

[The_KELRaTH]

It doesn't help the franchise that there's now much more competition coming out around the same time.
I was playing the Resistance 3 beta and thinking player motion feels like CoD (a good thing) but a new set of weapons and upgrades - I'll get this instead.
BF3 is a purchase whether opting for CoD3 or R3 so I'll have plenty to enjoy.

The only thing that could get me thinking about buying MW3 is a really good price and although each year there's loads of gossip about high prices or monthly online fees it always ends up with CoD launch prices (Supermarkets) being really cheap.

[SKUD]

I miss the days when an COD release (years apart) was actually something to look forward too.

[Gamer-Z]

Its on way down after MW3 whats left for this series? Without a new engine COD will not progress.

[JeffGUNZ]

That's what everyone said about MW2, then black ops, now MW3.

[kcuthbertson]

I'm pretty sure almost everyone was excited about MW2...

[JeffGUNZ]

Eh, I remember on this very site the same fanboys screaming that "Bad Company 2 is leagues a head and MW2 is is COD4.5".

[SageHonor]

Well, according to sales they kinda are going up

[FlashXIII]

Call of duty isn't on the up.. I think it's peaked tbh, maybe it can potentially go up slightly but ultimately I don't think any game can really topple the current sales COD is getting. The only one I can think of which even stands a chance would be WoW 2 or blizzard's next mmo project.

[Ocean]

Let's see how many MW3 owners take up the Elite option

[MasterCornholio]

Well Black Ops was a piece of crap in my opinion on the PS3 at least. I hope they do a better job with MW3 but i have a feeling that Battlefield 3 will be a lot better than it.

[MeNoRasta]

Yea cod is on the way up alright, up in price

[Moragami]

No doubt. I can't think of a CoD game that I'd pay $60 for, and no way I'd pay $50 a year for that stupid elite service either.

Too many better games out there these days.

[Kobe Bryant]

Cod sucks get Battlefield

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Its hard to argue with them when you see Blops continue to sell and hit the 23 million mark. Given the huge Blops numbers I just have a hard time seeing MW3 matching that. But even if they only hit say 18million...is that really downward trending? Or just that Blops was an anomolly in the series?

[HenryFord]

Saying that for example 18mio is "going down" would be way out of line, because that would be still on top of everything else. I expect that Blops is indeed an anomaly, caused by MW2 priors success. MW2 was so over the top and all over the place, people loved it and were pumped for Blops, adding a nice marketing-spree from Activision it sure pushed the sales. But I still argue that MW2 is the reason why Blops sold in the first place. Now - enter the "after Blops-market", people are back to their ground, they did realize that Blops was not that good of a game and MW3 will sell accordingly. It will do more than well, but I don't think that it'll beat Blops.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

@HenryFord, I think we agree on pretty much all points. I would however argue your point "Now - enter the "after Blops-market", people are back to their ground, they did realize that Blops was not that good of a game and MW3 will sell accordingly." I argue only in that sales of Blops have stayed so incredibly strong through the year... I am not really sure the masses ever came to a realization about Blops other than I want it.

[HenryFord]

Yeah, you are probably right - looking at the sales charts it still sold solid throughout the year, I just assumed it sold well at the beginning at the sales were declining - I was wrong...

[Ares90]

Activision CEO looks like a mobster

[DK_Kithuni_71]

I'll buy that. Time to go forward in time. Otherwise.. been there, done that.

[Jack_DangerousIy]

That was... funny?

I'm not sure what you were trying to do there. No matter what, it's fail.

[OcularVision]

A shooter set in the future? Never heard of such a thing.

/s

[artdafoo]

I actually agree, It has the possibility of going up. I mean when you're basically swimming whale shit that was Wack Ops and to some extent MW2 then yes, you really can't get any deeper. Then again this is COD we're talking about so you never know.

[PIayStation]

Herp derp. Call of Duty is a brain washing tool created by the illuminati, of course it is on its way up, as long as you keep doing as you are told, that is.

HURRR DURRR CONSPIRACY!

[Bladesfist]

Its funny too see people on here complaining about COD being the same every year and on the battlefield forums most people are complaining that it is not the same as bf2

[Sidewinder-]

Why would they say otherwise?

[BuT_TeR]

What goes up, must cum down.

[Xander756]

Why did this get so high in temperature? What do you expect them to say? "Yeah Call of Duty is DYING." Of course they would say it's going up!

[KendrickGLS]

call of bulls**t is going DOWN! Righteous!

[KendrickGLS]

@Bladesfist That's because Modern Warfare is crap, and needs some serious improvement, while Bad Company 2 on the other hand was just fine how it was. Righteous!