A message from the Call of Duty team. ("We will no longer do back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games")

MatrixReloaded101 said:
Once Xbox got a hold of Call of Duty it was a wrap because the franchise was already on a small decline .... and the Xbox team was just going to speed up that decline with the game pass nonsense.
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Activision being the cunts they are put the process in motion to start the decline to minimise value pre sale. Those bad decisions only started to take it's toll after MS deal had gone through.

Edit: Technically they never ruled out releasing Black Warfare annually.
 
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Jen Campbell, the writer for Black Ops 7 also worked on that cringe gen Z Saints row reboot, agents of mayhem and the MW3 reboot. Its like everything this woman's touch turn to shit and yet they keep hiring her
 
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"the Franchise has not met your expectations fully"

Usually if a business knows they fucked up, they figure out a way to make it up. Future promise of improved seasonal content is pretty lame.
 
KungFucius said:
Because that would be throwing billions away every other year.
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I'm not saying they should stop in perpetuity, just that taking a break at some point makes more sense than forcing a rushed CoD out every 12 months. Launch sales are way down this year, I think that's a sign the annual cycle is doing more harm than good.
 
I'm glad this POS has finally had its day, they were always capable of releasing a good cod and listening to their fans but they had no competition and pretty much did jack all to further expand this franchise, thought they were too big to fail. I'm glad BF6 and Arc raiders literally pulled their pants down.
 
//DEVIL// said:
I am not sure if this means no call of duty next year though
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It doesn't mean that unless they can't get a game made in time. They dropped that modern warfare one half baked after the MS purchase when I think they were planning on skipping a year as Activision.
 
Bridges said:
Seems like most people here may be misinterpreting this. As others have said, the franchise is still annual. This just means we won't get Modern Warfare II to Modern Warfare III again, or Black Ops 6 to Black Ops 7. Other than those two instances, they have not been repeating settings in releases since CoD4: Modern Warfare. It was weird that they started doing this in the first place and they must have enough data now to show that players don't want the same type of CoD two years in a row.

Release black ops, then give it 2-3 years until the next one so people miss it. Meanwhile, feed them with Modern Warfare and potential other new ideas. It's a winning formula. I think the only reason they ever strayed was because they were trying to rush things out the door as releases that either weren't ready or were initially meant to be expansions
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This argument makes sense for Modern Warfare but does it really make sense for Black Ops though?
6 was 90s post cold war drama, 7 was futuristic, does the name alone really make that much of a difference?

To me it just seems like this year's COD simply didn't stand out, it could be called Call of Duty Future Warfare or whatever and it would have still flopped simply because BF6 looked much better.
But then again we're talking about one of the most mindless audiences in the gaming industry so perhaps it does make a huge difference...
 
GudOlRub said:
does the name alone really make that much of a difference?

To me it just seems like this year's COD simply didn't stand out, it could be called Call of Duty Future Warfare or whatever and it would have still flopped
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Exactly. This is the point a lot of people are not seeing: The name of the game or its "lore" is meaningless if the game is trash.

A smack in the face like this, will force Activision to be better, but this will put even more pressure to an already fragile release schedule. The fact that they had to split one game into two releases is enough evidence (among other things) of this. I think the MS effect will be critical going forward.

A company like Activision needs to change dramatically, they can't keep up with a cadence like this.
 
ChorizoPicozo said:
Exactly. This is the point a lot of people are not seeing: The name of the game or its "lore" is meaningless if the game is trash.

A smack in the face like this, will force Activision to be better, but this will put even more pressure to an already fragile release schedule. The fact that they had to split one game into two releases is enough evidence (among other things) of this. I think the MS effect will be critical going forward.

A company like Activision needs to change dramatically, they can't keep up with a cadence like this.
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They kept up the cadence for almost 20 years when they were an independent publisher and studio run by Bobby Kotick

I wonder what changed recently?
 
MacReady13 said:
Microsoft don't care about sales anymore- it's all about engagement numbers for them. Sales mean nothing now that you can play it on the best deal in gaming for FREE!
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To a certain extent that is true. There were already numbers revealed a while ago (don't remember where) that showed they made a lot more money on battlepasses, upgrades and cosmetics than game sales.
 
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Bridges said:
Seems like most people here may be misinterpreting this. As others have said, the franchise is still annual. This just means we won't get Modern Warfare II to Modern Warfare III again, or Black Ops 6 to Black Ops 7. Other than those two instances, they have not been repeating settings in releases since CoD4: Modern Warfare. It was weird that they started doing this in the first place and they must have enough data now to show that players don't want the same type of CoD two years in a row.

Release black ops, then give it 2-3 years until the next one so people miss it. Meanwhile, feed them with Modern Warfare and potential other new ideas. It's a winning formula. I think the only reason they ever strayed was because they were trying to rush things out the door as releases that either weren't ready or were initially meant to be expansions
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The irony is that BO7 was at least the expected standard COD title while MW3 was literally MW2-2, rushed to the door. IIRC it all started with Black Ops Cold War/Vanguard being in a messy state from Sledgehammer and Raven bickering each other that Treyarch had to rescue BOCW in a matter of months, so all their schedule except for Infinity Ward has been fucked up.
Stuart360 said:
I wouldnt count your chickens yet when it comes to COD. I remember everyone rejoicing to the 'death' of COD with Ghosts, then Infinite Warfare, then the MW3 mess.
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Ironic that years later people started to appreciate Infinite Warfare efforts, but COD Ghosts was the culmination of bitter taste that they would need to knock it out of the park with a sequel, and Battlefield shat the bed with BFV and BF2042.
 
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UltimaKilo said:
That's quite the departure. Seemed like there was a new CoD every month and they were on CoD 317.
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No it's not, they've only done back to back twice and it was recently. They're just gonna go back to what they did for the 15 years prior. Release annually, but a different subset of the franchise.
 
How about a good WWII game? WaW was awesome, and WWII was good too. WWII still had a good old school feel to the game while it totally changed being super fast paced afterwards. Vanguard was shit.
 
1) They thought their sales would be fine even if they released a crappy entry. They thought wrong.

2) They thought their sales would be fine even if they put the game on Game Pass. They thought wrong.

Lots of bad thinkers over there.
 
Plenty of people here, myself included were saying this was a bad decision to release the sequel back to back. Still, this series under the ownership of MS will stagnate. MS doesn't allow things to grow, or nurture talent. They are not a creative company, it's not in their DNA, even Bobby Kotick knew this.
 
diffusionx said:
once people stop caring and move on, it's over

Black Ops is cringe and stupid now and people found other games. It's like Tony Hawk. It went from too big to fail to totally dead in like 3 years.
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I gotta disagree, we lived through Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare and Black Ops 3, all with jetpack exo suit nonsense that didn't fly. If they bounced back from that they can get over this. We still haven't had two consecutive misfires

Reizo Ryuu said:
Nah players have been wanting a "year 2" of support for a long time, MWIII was their way of trying to doing that, that's why everything you bought for MWII carried forward to MWIII; they wanted to do the same for BO6 >7, but then people complained about the cartoon skins and they canceled carry forward completely, effectively killing the "year 2" purpose of it.
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I get what you're saying. I was one of the people who wanted a year 2. But I wanted a REAL year 2 of support. Skins carrying over is nice but it's not like you kept the maps or any of that. It was barely a different game but it still was a different game. If they want to make continuations they need to do it within the same release and not push out a whole "new" game with the dev cycle of a sports game.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
They kept up the cadence for almost 20 years when they were an independent publisher and studio run by Bobby Kotick

I wonder what changed recently?
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I think MS has nothing to do (yet) with creative and management issues, the cracks have been showing for the better part of 10 years. To me, it is evident that the CoD development has been working in overdrive mode. Hate and criticism from fans has been constant and getting worse every year.

This entry being the biggest wake-up call, the next entry will probably take a hit due to GTA VI. Plus, losing revenue due to the genius idea of putting CoD on Game Pass will force MS to make a decision:


1. Even more investment to ensure a more effective development cycle.

2. Change the release schedule to give more time to the studios

3. Change COD altogether. No more yearly releases but make it an ongoing "platform". (which I think was kind of a rumor at one point?).


Knowing MS, and the state of Xbox. It's clear that investment for them will be pushing AI at the expense of people In order to improve margins. And that is going to fuck everything up. Like, Crackdown 3 with cloud computing.
 
Stuart360 said:
You know what would of been interesting to see, if BO7 had come BEFORE BF6 and Arc Raiders, and not after.
I could imagine the popularty of those 2 games put people off COD, atleast at launch anyway.
I still wouldnt be surprised this time next year, BO7 was still in the top 10, or even top 5 biggest selling games of the past year.
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Would've
 
It's amazing how bad Microsoft is with buying other companies. All literally burned to the ground. Maybe that was the point.
 
adamsapple said:
It doesn't. They're simply saying they won't do back to back releases of the same sub-franchise, like how they did two MW games back to back and then two BLOps games back to back.
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oh ok. makes more sense now. i was worried I wont be getting IW next year -_-
 
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Didn't they already say they weren't going to do this before? Then they proceeded to do it anyway? Lmao.

I feel like they won't ATM, just like they said before. But if they release another one that does insanely well, it'll change again, lol.
 
Bridges said:
I gotta disagree, we lived through Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare and Black Ops 3, all with jetpack exo suit nonsense that didn't fly. If they bounced back from that they can get over this. We still haven't had two consecutive misfires
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the last good cod was BOCW, it's just been one pile of shit after another and this is the year it fell apart

people just kept buying them becausse they had no real alternative, now they do, it didn't help that they released probably the worst COD yet the same year as Battlefield 6, far worse than AW/IW/BO3, but that's how it goes
 
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It's Halo downfall all over again, isn't it?

My god Microsoft Gaming is truly managed by generational talents. They will easily make a multimillion series out of multibillion one.
 
Artistic said:
I'm more than positive Black Ops 7 still sold well. Changes in development cycles has been in talks for years now.

Change isn't always a bad thing.
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And what does it have to do with anything?

If the game sold well then Microsoft/ABK wouldn't put a statement like that because nobody would care.
 
I thought the campaign in BO7 seemed interesting but I stopped playing when they expected me to go through a whole mission a 4th time because there was no mid save point if I left the game or the game crashed.

Make it fully offline.

Add permanent save points mid mission.
 
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Artistic said:
I'm more than positive Black Ops 7 still sold well. Changes in development cycles has been in talks for years now.

Change isn't always a bad thing.
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Even if it sold okay-ish (because series like CoD stagnates in very slow motion), I'd bet retention numbers are absolute dogshit, hence this somewhat awkward message.

You don't put such a statement of everything is good and your market is firmly under your control.
 
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