Activision Asks Itself: Isn't Call of Duty Like Guitar Hero Used to Be?

[Frotality]

if those points made on how to achieve its potential were ever actually followed at all...well, the "make players not want to leave" part is true, but quality and innovation certainly are not.

ill assume he meant advertisement quality and innovations in DLC pricing and selling, they would actually do that.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

The fact that they're talking about the untapped potential of the most successful fucking game in the history of the planet tells you everything you need to know about modern business. It's all about ridiculously unhealthy, unsustainable, destructive growth, and the end result is always the same: oversaturation. Followed by layoffs.

Never at the top, though. Odd, that.

 

[fix-the-spade]

"Has grown steadily each year"? Meaning staying almost the exact same, except with a few different guns, more glitches, and less balance each year?

Wrong growth.

He's on about sales, as the world keeps proving, people will buy Call of Duty who ever makes it and however average the game is.

 

[Shale_Dirk]

Bobby Kotick and the rest of the senior executives at Activision make the most money by pumping out the easiest crap to make (read: same engine as used in previous titles with light graphical updates)in the shortest amount of time as possible. It's in their best interest to milk franchises to death because the second it no longer becomes profitable, they can all just walk away and leave a sucking crater of creative void, happy with their short term profits.

It's like this. Would you rather:

a) Receive $500,000 tomorrow, and a pat on the back from the board of investors, or:
b) Receive $100,000 every month, knowing you might get fired at some point in the next 6 months because your title(s) wasn't/weren't as successful as expected. (You would continue to receive installments of $100,000 after the 6-month post-release period)

Greedy bastards (and those that play things safe), would choose a. Those that have an actual creative investment in the product (or backbone) would choose b. Hence; Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and CoD.

 

[DTWolfwood]

:O they might be learning from their mistakes! OMG!

 

[spwatkins]

So does that make MOH the Rock Band of FPS?

In this situation COD would be Rock Band and MOH would be Guitar Hero because MOH was the original franchise that was eclipsed when many of its developers moved to COD.

 

[MrStab]

Well i hope it really does hit its peak and people get uninterested and go jump on the band wagon for something else and make that shit too, i really enjoyed CoD2 as a game and that is what i want the CoD series to go back to as that in my opinion is what it was good at, because CoD today is just the new mainstream title to play which is probably why i stopped playing the series all together, and i mean this in all sincerity when i say fuck off and give me my game back to all the jump on the band wagon wankers that fill the only servers today, fucking twelve year olds.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Call of Duty's potential is rather limited by it's specific genre (realistic fps). Once graphics are at a standard of not looking much better and controls have been perfected there won't really be much you can do with it. It's setting doesn't allow for sci-fi or fantasy related material(except zombies for some reason) to change aspects of the game. I think Call of Duty will stay around however it will probably be a single release with the focus going to downloadable maps.

 

[beema]

So although this memo shockingly shows that Activision is self-aware, it does not show that they intend to do anything about this potential problem. I'm positive that the COD franchise will crash and burn within a year or so. Then they will find some new franchise to whore out until it disintegrates, and so on and so forth until infinity.

After this memo, Hirshberg was promptly fired for "supposing outside the box."

 

[WanderingFool]

"Has grown steadily each year"? Meaning staying almost the exact same, except with a few different guns, more glitches, and less balance each year?

*EDIT* Here's a fantastic idea, how about we stop quoting me now? IT WAS A JOKE. CALM DOWN PEOPLE.

Really? Thats a shame, becasue I mostly agree with that statement.

 

[Aeshi]

Guitar Hero used to have loads of gunning down Russians/Nazis/Generic Terrorists and blowing their stuff up?

Odd.I always thought they were music games.

 

[GonzoGamer]

[blockquote] surrounding the brand with a suite of services and an online community that makes our fans never want to leave.

Entertainment franchises with staying power are rare. But Call of Duty shows all of the signs of being able to be one of them. It's up to us.[/blockquote]

Whatever you think of Activision as a moral entity, its leadership is fairly business-savvy.

And that's what has me worried: it seems like they're gearing up for a whole new way to rip us off.

 

[Ryan_26]

I'll be honest hear, I played Modern Warfare 2. Thought it was cool but that's about it.

I'm a fan of guitar hero as well. There are 2 reasons why I think it failed. First off; coming out with about 3 games a year was a bad idea and there were way too many of them, the fact that they wanted full release price for each one didn't help either.

The biggest one for me had to be the song choices. Everyone's taste in music is different but for every 1 good song that awesome to see on the list there were about 5 worthless ones. and this started at GH III

I'll still get the others but I'll wait until they're cheap to do it.

As for my opinion on the "Memo" I think it's utter crap, the plastic instruments comment is void because I've only got one guitar from GH III that works with everything else. not including the original GH guitar I had to get.

It's basically saying that FPS players are blind and will buy anything we throw at them. Just look at the map packs they want 15 dollars for. Their "great mulitiplayer community" is just a different way of saying look how much money we're making off it. Where as Most players are jerks who think they're gods of gaming because they're at a higher level and cheat to win. I know this because I play Online and it's pretty much the same for any game of that style.

If you read between the lines they're insulting Guitar Hero fans and calling COD players mindless sheep.

That might be going a bit far but at least part of the memo feels like that to me.

 

[RaikuFA]

just... just go away activision. all your games suck and youre just a horrible company

 

[L3m0n_L1m3]

"Has grown steadily each year"? Meaning staying almost the exact same, except with a few different guns, more glitches, and less balance each year?

*EDIT* Here's a fantastic idea, how about we stop quoting me now? IT WAS A JOKE. CALM DOWN PEOPLE.

Really? Thats a shame, becasue I mostly agree with that statement.

I just got fed up with people telling me it was sales growth, really.

 

[El Danny]

What your talking about is a small minority of gamers and they play things other then cod/halo as well. They would be doing the exact same thing on any game they play. But its not them that give "gamers" a bad name its people like you and all of the other cod haters. If you want to know why its because you wont shut the hell up about it. We get it you dont like the call of duty games so shut up and play something else and let those who do enjoy them enjoy them without the constant harrassment.

You are right though we dont need more CoD/Halo games for the teens, we need more fun games like CoD for everybody. Because thats what the CoD games are, extremely fun and enjoyable.

He's allowed an opinion, just because it's different from yours doesn't make it wrong. Cut down on the angst and stop being a hypocrite.