In case you haven’t heard, UK sales of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare in the UK are 48.8% lower than last year’s Black Ops 3. While this doesn’t count digital sales or physical ones in the US, it’s still safe to assume Call of Duty’s numbers are not what they used to be.
This isn’t necessarily due to the quality of the game as it’s been reviewing pretty well. (You can check out our review here.) A number of factors play into this: there was no PS3 or 360 version of the game and a slew of amazing and top-selling shooters came out last month alone. It’s also worth noting that the series has technically been declining since the first Black Ops, but not nearly as fast until the release of the poorly-received Ghosts.
Personally, I have the game sitting in my Xbox One and I can’t wait to play it. Even if the game is good, however, one thing is for certain: people are getting tired of Call of Duty. The reveal trailer of Infinite Warfare still remains to be the second-most disliked YouTube video of all time, and the rest of the videos on the channel still have a hefty number of dislikes. You can claim they’re just trolls all you want, but you can’t argue with the numbers.
Do not fret though, this could very well be a good thing for the future of Call of Duty. How so? Take a look at Assassin’s Creed, an annual franchise that is not seeing a new installment this year. Ubisoft has decided to not release a game this year in order to figure out what direction they would like to take the series. They will likely take more than a year, but we have yet to see if it will pay off in the long run. If it does, it’s probably time for the Call of Duty publisher’s Activision to do the same.
A couple years ago, Activision had no reason not to keep releasing the games every year. They were making an annual ton of money by doing so. Now, things are different. Battlefield 1 has received critical and financial success by going back to the past. Titanfall 2 is redefining the elements of a sci-fi shooter. DOOM helped us realize that campaigns can be AMAZING again. Maybe it’s time for Call of Duty to find its identity again, sticking to the future genre probably isn’t the best for series.
As someone who ate up Call of Duty games during the Modern Warfare and Black Ops Trilogies (wasn’t a fan of 3, however), I can admit that the games just haven’t been going in the right direction as of late. I might wind up liking Infinite Warfare, but my stance will remain the same: Call of Duty needs to go on a journey and find itself. Whether it be in a year or two, I will be fine waiting longer than a year for the next game if that means everyone will love it.
from Nerd Reactor
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