[IGN] Activision Says It's Doing Almost No Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Pre-Promotion

EverydayBeast said:
Call of duty is strong enough it doesn't need promotion
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I think this is right, tbh.

Pre-Promotion likely means stuff that takes place long before the game is available, not when it's about to release, would be my guess.

It'll be interesting to see how visible the game is, and how well it performs. Activision, and Xbox by extension, will be looking at how it plays out, but COD is one of the biggest brands in gaming, it's current players will be treated to various promos through COD HQ, and it's likely every Xbox player will get a splash screen at some point when turning on their consoles, potentially those who are accessing Xbox through consoles, pc and streaming. Plus all the social media, emails, whatever it is that people have signed up for. In that way, COD will find it easier to connect to its core audience than most franchises because it's continually in touch with them already.

You can see why it's worth running the experiment. The data they get will likely inform a number of game launches.
 
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Astray said:
Kind of a risky time for EA/Battlefield too.

EA FC is underperforming apparently, Dragon Age flopped and their financials got a bit soft as a result.
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Absolutely, that's how risk works. If me and you are playing Russian roulette the risk to me doesn't mitigate the risk to you and vice versa.

Punished Miku said:
I doubt any of that is really going to be risky. I quoted that so I thought it was clear. Battlefield will likely just bring even more interest into the military shooter genre. Black Ops is popular. I don't see any major risk here.
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That's not really how risk works.

Time and money is finite. The more people who buy battlefield the fewer people will buy CoD.

Competition can grow the pot, but it still needs to come from somewhere. This genre is in maturity. There's generally a ceiling here.

RP_Cover_What-is-a-risk-assessment-matrix-1-scaled.jpg


Even if you think something is very unlikely, if the severity of that outcome is substantial it's still defined as risky.

I would say that EA putting a ton of money into BF, getting a marketing deal with Sony, a bundle with Sony, CoD not marketing itself in advance, and a low effort release puts the idea of BF taking significant market share from CoD in the possible category combined with the severity being severe. That's medium high risk...
 
Mibu no ookami said:
Absolutely, that's how risk works. If me and you are playing Russian roulette the risk to me doesn't mitigate the risk to you and vice versa.



That's not really how risk works.

Time and money is finite. The more people who buy battlefield the fewer people will buy CoD.

Competition can grow the pot, but it still needs to come from somewhere. This genre is in maturity. There's generally a ceiling here.

RP_Cover_What-is-a-risk-assessment-matrix-1-scaled.jpg


Even if you think something is very unlikely, if the severity of that outcome is substantial it's still defined as risky.

I would say that EA putting a ton of money into BF, getting a marketing deal with Sony, a bundle with Sony, CoD not marketing itself in advance, and a low effort release puts the idea of BF taking significant market share from CoD in the possible category combined with the severity being severe. That's medium high risk...
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I guess EA has it all figured out. Brutal to see Call of Duty die like this. Play it while you can I guess. Will be gone soon at this rate.
 
Lower marketing spend to recoup lost sales via gamepass only players.

Then when that fails create new editions of the game next year so gamepass players no longer get the full game.

Once that fails go back to fully paid price only and gamepass members get a discount.

Once that fails then it's full steam ahead to the old model because Xbox will be selling activision.
 
I'm more interested in knowning why it isn't coming to switch (or at least advertised as coming) after all the hoopla they played in front of the FTC about 'as soon as the deal closes'.
 
Punished Miku said:
No, I dont think youre very good at making charts.
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...again... do you think I made this chart which is a cross industry standard risk assessment chart? lol...

Three said:
I'm more interested in knowning why it isn't coming to switch (or at least advertised as coming) after all the hoopla they played in front of the FTC about 'as soon as the deal closes'.
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Same reason why a lot of games haven't been brought over to Switch 2. Just not enough time with devkits. Will probably come over next year, but that complicates things in the sense that you have to have a build that works on Switch 2 for what? The entire generation? Again, inherently risky.

All the money spent on a Switch 2 port isn't going to be going into making this game the best game it can be. Meanwhile BF is going to be spending every dime on getting it in a place to compete with COD.
 
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This is what happens when you put the IP on GP. Literally months later, and they don't have the usual 120M+ in marketing anymore.

GOOD. When it's on the ground, kill it with fire. This parasite must die.😍
 
Thinking that a game like this doesn't need marketing is foolish. The next fromsoft singleplayer masterpiece doesn't need marketing because of the reputation of the developer and a fanbase that is more "hardcore" than average. They follow what's happening, and pre order everything because fromsoft is known to deliver (and even then, don't expect 15M+ sales without marketing). CoD, especially in the last two-or-so-years, has been a disasastrous shithole even with the more tryhard community that plays Warzone daily. The little reputation this franchise still had, is completely in the shitter, and if you don't invest 100M+ in marketing to brainwash it's casual community, forget record breaking sales.

But hey! MS killed Halo, their flagship IP. Now they might be doing the same to CoD.😅
 
Astray said:

Activision Says It's Doing Almost No Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Pre-Promotion: 'We're Setting This Up More Like a Beyonce Album Dropping'


www.ign.com

Activision Says It Set Up Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Reveal 'More Like a Beyonce Album Dropping' - IGN

Microsoft announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at its Xbox Games Showcase June 2025, a reveal that came later in the year than is usual for the series. And the debut trailer, below, gave fans little to go on beyond a story tease and confirmation of the year in which the game is set (2035) and its...
www.ign.com www.ign.com

Not sure what they're thinking with this strategy, feels like a cost cutting measure now that COD doesn't have Sony's marketing funds and worldwide reach.
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It's 100% a cost cutting measure. Might work though not sure COD needs to much promotion other than being features on the Sony store.
 
Activision is incapable of releasing two good COD games in a row these days. This will almost certainly be another mediocre reviews MW3 situation
 
They can create the best selling CoD with this simple trick:

"We will be adding an slider that hides all store skins and replaces "operators" with generic soldiers". It will sell more than bread. Sadly this is just a wild dream of mine.
 
Will they be donating the usual allotted marketing money to charity? If not, who gives a shit? COD sells on its name and branding alone. And whatever they show in a prerelease commercial is not going to be indicative of the final product anyway, given all of the season passes and cosmetic content that gets added throughout the life of the game. The industry is a sewer of corpo greed and people are reporting on less marketing for something that doesn't need marketing. What a time to be alive.
 
I heard a rumor that this game will bring back the jetpack formula from BO4, if that's the case, I'll skip this one. TBH, I'm looking forward to the next Battlefield, hoping that Dice delivers this time.
 
Punished Miku said:
They have a search engine, AI, and Windows telemetry data so I suspect they have some idea what works and what people look at. My working theory was that shadow dropping makes sense for niche or hardcore content, but marketing is useful for more mainstream stuff. Then they shadow dropped Oblivion. Seems to be something they think works for them.

I can't imagine paying for TV commercials actually does anything now. Mostly people over 60 watching it, literally. Maybe we'll see some bigger ads closer to release on streaming services, billboards, etc. They wouldn't change it with Call of Duty if it wasn't based on something.
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You can't be serious.....
 
Mibu no ookami said:
You doubt what?

That EA is doubling down investment on Battlefield? That two BLOPs in a row might reduce sales especially if it's seen as low effort? That there will probably be a battlefield marketing campaign with Sony next year?

All of these things are inherently define as risk.
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100% facts! COD can't rest of its laurels.
 
Pretty sure the lot of you dont seem to understand what the word "Pre" in Pre-Promotion is.

Like at no point have they said anything about not promoting the game.
They probably mean literally the emails you'd get going "tune into..." or the whole "lets do a teaser for a trailer".

Call of Duty does not need "pre" - promotion at this point. You know what the game is, you know you'll eventually play it, and if you dont, someone else will.

For all this doom and gloom, Blops 6 was still the most sold game of 2024, and it released late last year.
 
XBOX and PS competing for COD created a high price for it's marketing rights.

Now that it's owned by a platform holder (Xbox) Sony have no motivation to boost the sales of their main rivals game and would rather spend that elsewhere. Not to mention it's on gamepass so it's a harder sell to market.

The only marketing Xbox will do is in conjunction with Gamepass. Another big downside of this market consolidation. The sale should never have been allowed in the first place.
 
Can't blame them. My most anticipated game due simply to fun, eventually rage, getting gold lmgs, getting bored, quitting and replaying again.

It ain't BO unless there are pistol builds, shotgun and lmg builds.
 
Call of Duty is the #1 best selling game in the US practically every year, and probably top 3 globally. It doesn't need much of an advertising push other than to let people know when it's out.
 
If they are now on a more like dlc than new game cadence, every other year, then I'm cool with it as long as skins carry into year 2 again. I liked keeping skins for two years last time,
 
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