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Does Call Of Duty Deserve To Be #1 For 7 Years In A Row?

Ben-Dutka 18 Comments

So, it's official: Another Call of Duty game is the best-selling game of the year in the U.S.

And Activision claims this is the seventh consecutive year that a CoD title has topped the domestic charts (with the lone exception of GTAV in 2013).

So, the question should be obvious: Does this IP deserve such ridiculous success? Well, the simple and logical answer would be "yes," as it's obviously what the market wants and demands. Gamers can whine about it all they want; doesn't seem to hurt the franchise's popularity in the slightest, does it? Of course CoD "deserves" to win; the fans make it win, as they respond year in and year out.

Of course, you could go deeper than that and question whether or not this industry, like all the other entertainment venues these days, has become depressingly one-dimensional. Genres are blending into genres, it seems like every last game in existence is either an open-world adventure of some kind or a multiplayer-centric shooter of another kind. The days of strict platformers, stealth, adventure, and even traditional RPGs are well behind us, and almost every new game is either "action/adventure" or "FPS." RPG is holding strong but all of those are basically open-world action-based now, anyway.

And yeah, the same titles are starting to dominate the charts. It's no surprise to anyone that Madden is always on there, nor is it any surprise to see Grand Theft Auto in the mix whenever it's available. Then big-name sequels, like 2015's Fallout 4 , are predictably giant. Rehashed but flashier, predictable but familiar, fewer chances taken in order to appease the masses and casuals, etc, etc, etc. Sounds familiar; it's what happens when any industry goes mainstream. Even so, if we're just talking about "deserving," than CoD has to win because…well, everyone says it deserves to win. Their wallets say so.

Right?

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Call Of Duty Infographic Is Mind-Boggling

Ben-Dutka 5 Comments

These are some ridiculous numbers.

Activision has sent over a new Call of Duty infographic, which proves the franchise's utter domination over the years.

The series boasts over $11 billion in total lifetime revenue; all told, there have been 175 million CoD titles sold to date. This works out to approximately one copy sold every two seconds, which is just beyond silly. The only franchise to claim more overall sales is Grand Theft Auto , coming in at 185 million.

Over 100 billion multiplayer matches have been played, players have thrown over 300 billion grenades, and there has been 579 billion in-game awards earned. That's five times the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, if you were wondering.

We all knew CoD was a huge franchise but when you see numbers like this, you have to wonder: Has multiplayer gaming proven to be more popular (and more addictive) than single-player gaming could ever be? Obviously, these numbers wouldn't exist without the CoD multiplayer, so…

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Report: Advanced Warfare Can’t Stop Franchise’s Decline

Ben-Dutka 13 Comments

Despite the upswing in quality this year's entry represented, it seems the Call of Duty franchise continues to decline.

After the recent NPD report , Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson pointed out that retail sales for the blockbuster series have declined 27 percent year-over-year.

Call of Duty has posted declining sales in each of the past three years, and the positive reaction to Advanced Warfare hasn't halted the slide. As GamesIndustry.biz reports , the latest installment earned less than half the first-month sales of 2011's Modern Warfare 3 . Activision says Advanced Warfare is the highest-selling digital launch in console history, but Olson doesn't think these sales are good enough:

"NPD data does not include digital copies or international sales, which, if included, would lessen the year-over-year decline, but we believe this data suggests potential for Q4 revenue upside is now very low."

Maybe it's not enough that the franchise got better. Maybe it's simply that consumers are just tired of the name, "Call of Duty."

Related Game(s): Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

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Maybe It’s Fair And Logical To Say CoD Deserves To Sell

Ben-Dutka 56 Comments

Business is business. Supply and demand. It's pretty simple and straightforward, actually.

We can all wish things were a little different. We can make valid arguments as to why Call of Duty shouldn't be the biggest name in the video game industry right now. Some might even be able to make legitimate arguments for saying CoD actually holds us back in some ways.

But is it really correct to say that the CoD titles don't deserve the sales they get? Is that an accurate statement? I'm not so sure… Logically speaking, if a company creates a product that everyone wants and a whole lot of people buy it, then things have gone as planned. The company delivered what was demanded and the consumers responded. Tit for tat. This is how business operates; it's the core of business, it's what makes business utilize an extraordinarily simple philosophy. Of course, that being said, this "extraordinarily simple philosophy" can become immensely complicated, as just about anyone will tell you.

Therefore, if you have an argument for or against the statement in the title of this article, we'd like to hear it. Do you support the idea that each CoD title absolutely deserves to break sales records? Or can you argue that in fact, these games don't deserve the sales they achieve?

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Call Of Duty: The Only Reason The 360 Still Outsells The PS3?

Ben-Dutka 65 Comments

Bear with my train of logic for a moment, bearing in mind that I'm a big fan of several Xbox 360 exclusives.

First, the facts- The Xbox 360 routinely outsells the PlayStation 3 in North America, although in terms of worldwide sales, it now appears as if the two consoles are just about even. Call of Duty certainly sells best in the US, the one country where the 360 actually does top the PS3 on a consistent basis. And according to recent numbers, approximately 70% of CoD players use the 360 for playing any new entry. Typically, the split is 70/30 between the PS3 and 360 versions of any new CoD and sometimes it's an even bigger discrepancy.

Now, the PS3 is well known for its exclusives (no, we don't need to run down the list). The 360…well, we've got Gears , Forza , Halo , and Alan Wake , with a few other minor ones (like one of my favorites, Lost Odyssey ) adding to the console's appeal. But Gears and Forza combined could never hope to reach Call of Duty sales numbers, and the Halo fans have to face up to facts…this is a CoD world these days, although Halo 4 is slated for the fall. The bottom line is that the 360 exclusives, regardless of what anyone says, don't have anywhere near the appeal Call of Duty has on a country-wide basis. I mean, it's not really even close.

Then you start counting up the sales of the 360 versions of the last four CoD entries…the numbers are astronomical. Of course, the PS3 benefits to some extent as well, but it's hardly the same thing. Furthermore, as CoD is basically a community event (multiplayer is the major draw), newcomers are probably enticed to purchase a 360 because the majority of their friends likely play CoD on Microsoft's system. So it's very likely that a great many people out there did in fact purchase a 360 only for CoD in the past few years, and given the sheer size of the numbers associated with that franchise, and Microsoft's general success in this country…

Now, if you just took away CoD and didn't factor in the profound impact that franchise has had, would it really significantly affect 360 console sales? I honestly think it would.

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