Update: Call of Duty - Infinite Warfare Pre-Orders Are Incredibly Low

[Hawki]

Thankfully, I'm so glad that this has happened. "Yearly Call of Duty" was something that simply had to stop, and it might as well be this year.

Why? Why does it HAVE to stop? What were yearly COD releases doing to you? Were they beating you with rocks? Were they raping your dog?

Well, they WERE putting a dog in the line of fire when they weren't using groundbreaking technology to frighten poor fishes, so there is that.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Oh, this is just awesome. I wonder if the whole Modern Warfare remaster being exclusive to buyers of IW is the main reason the numbers are so low, or most COD players a finally realizing there will be plenty of copies (especially via the PSN and Live stores), or if the MW debacle is just the final straw after years of seeing the series decline. Considering how some people are really looking forward to the new game's different approach to an FPS campaign mode, I'm leaning towards the first point. Activision tried something kinda dirty, and the community has finally reacted. I'm proud of my consumer brethren. Maybe when Activision announces a separate SKU for the MW remaster, IW preorders will pick, up or its sales during the launch window will match the other CODs' numbers.

Maybe Acti will tone back the yearly updates and let one or two of the three developers assigned to COD do something else. (Hopefully, they don't just fire a ton of the development team, but lately, there's always bad news with good news in this industry.) All they've needed to do was go to 1 COD every 2 or 3 years, and support the latest 2 titles with the occasional map pack and, maybe now, mini-campaign DLC a year or so after the main titles release. (Oh, and keep microtransactions purely cosmetic.)

 

[Sonicron]

What was it that Sterling said years ago? It went something like, "Gamers will buy anything - until they don't. And that lack of support will be sudden, sharp and painful." Looks like time might be up for Activision's most reliable cash cow.

EDIT:
Actually, maybe we're even lucky enough to see the community slowly edge its way towards growing a spine. Remember the pre-order scheme Square Enix had originally planned for the next Deus Ex? ... Yeah.

 

[laggyteabag]

Oh. This is VERY unexpected.

Usually, the game does very, very well, regardless of the backlash, but I honestly never really expected this to happen.

I always thought that Call of Duty would be king of the castle for a very long time, and that despite Battlefield 1's high praise, Call of Duty would still sell many, many more copies that it, and it would be surprising if BF could even hold a candle to that success, but now, it seems like it is a lot less impossible.

 

[Saelune]

I bet a lot of the reason is actually Treyarch's fault due to the last gen version having most of its content cut. My brief time at Gamestop was during then, and that was a thing that I got asked a lot about. Maybe a lot of people pre-ordered the PS3 or 360 version not knowing, and are now worried.

Also maybe cause this is finally a current gen CoD, and lots of people still don't have Xbox Ones and PS4s, particularly those who mostly just play CoD and only had a last gen console cause of it.

 

[The Jovian]

The way I see it there are three factors that together resulted in the low pre-orders:

1) The franchise fatigue: I'm really starting to think that people are just tired of the franchise at this point and want it to go away.

2) The Sci-fi inchworming: The series has been inchworming in the sci-fi genre's direction since MW2 and despite this game fully committing to the genre it somehow feels completely done to death simply because of how much it resembles Hack Ops 3 and Advanced Snorefare.

3) The Modern Warfare remastering bullsh*t: This really pissed a lot of people off (myself included).

Individually I doubt that these factors could've killed the enthusiasm for this game. If it maintained the sci-fi setting but was released 5 years from now, without the MW1 remaster attached to it, I doubt the reaction would've been so negative. If it were set in WW2 without the MW1 remaster it also would've been seen as a breath of fresh air despite the franchise fatigue. But because Activision fired all three of this triple-barreled shit shotgun's barrels all at once the end result is everybody giving them the shaft.

And I'm glad that Activision f*cked up so badly that nobody is rushing to its defense anymore. If this game bombs I really hope it marks the end of this dead horse franchise, at least as an annual staple.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I don't know whether this is backlash to Activision's desperate marketing, or the fact it's in the future

I think there's a few reasons.

The biggest (and sadly least exciting) is that a lot of Call of Duty players don't pre-order, they just buy it from the store or their parents buy it from the store for them. CoD is like EA sports games in that respect, it's biggest market isn't the pre-ordering hobbyist. These people will buy a shed load of Call of Duty come November.

After that, After Modern Warfare 3, BlOps 2, Ghosts, Advanced Warfare and BlOps 3 players are a bit sick of every call of duty looking like a Neill Blomkamp movie. Activision are famously risk averse but with three studios working on three CoD games at the same time you would think they'd do more than just future warfare all the time.

Lastly it's Infinity Ward, nobody that knows cares about Infinity Ward anymore, the last thing they made was Ghosts.

 

[rodneyy]

I think there's a few reasons.

The biggest (and sadly least exciting) is that a lot of Call of Duty players don't pre-order, they just buy it from the store or their parents buy it from the store for them. CoD is like EA sports games in that respect, it's biggest market isn't the pre-ordering hobbyist. These people will buy a shed load of Call of Duty come November.

while a large chunk of sales do come on the day i had a quick look on the same site as OT the week before realease and it was about 1.4mil preorders over the two platforms. no matter how many people buy on the day 640k is a big percentage of players.

one other thing i see said a lot is that while some people are super into cod others only buy it because all their friends are playing it and want to play together, maybe that accounts for a part of buying on the day, they are waiting to see what their friends buy and then following the crowd. if the crowd has moved on they might move on as well.

i wonder if overwatch has anything to do with this. it seems to be doing good numbers and getting a lot of attention. it could be the people who like to preorder cod got a free play of it during the beta and found their new obsession.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Maybe it's just that the trailer is so bland and uninteresting that even the "true believers" just don't find it appealing.

combined[/I]

Is it bold, or italics, the world may never know.

Boldtalics: They're a thing now!

 

[RJ 17]

Isn't this because of the Modern-warfare remaster bullshit? Because if people are getting tired of yearly cod, the decline shouldn't be this drastic. Or the fact that the setting is too far forward in the future that they lost their main demographic?

As I recall, the Modern Warfare Remaster bullshit was actually Activision's response to the poor reception of the original trailer...a bit more honey to try and bait people into pre-orders.

Clearly it didn't work.

 

[Czann]

The cow would eventually become a dried out husk.

It seems the day is coming.

 

[MCerberus]

Maybe it's just that the trailer is so bland and uninteresting that even the "true believers" just don't find it appealing.

combined[/I]

Is it bold, or italics, the world may never know.

Boldtalics: They're a thing now!

In HTML you're supposed to use instead of both and , with you manually setting the font weight and whether it's italicized in the style sheet. But more to the point, CSS: Boldtalics before it was cool.

edit- these forums are sanitized against html injections huh. Somebody in the past kept posting embedded midi files didn't they?

OT- Something that's been ignored is that activision let the air out of its own room this year. They're the owners and publishers for Blizzard whose game, Team Fortress 3, has been so popular Amazon Prime is out of physical copies (and I refuse to buy it without the $10 discount damn it)

 

[squid5580]

I don't know whether this is backlash to Activision's desperate marketing, or the fact it's in the future

I think there's a few reasons.

The biggest (and sadly least exciting) is that a lot of Call of Duty players don't pre-order, they just buy it from the store or their parents buy it from the store for them. CoD is like EA sports games in that respect, it's biggest market isn't the pre-ordering hobbyist. These people will buy a shed load of Call of Duty come November.

After that, After Modern Warfare 3, BlOps 2, Ghosts, Advanced Warfare and BlOps 3 players are a bit sick of every call of duty looking like a Neill Blomkamp movie. Activision are famously risk averse but with three studios working on three CoD games at the same time you would think they'd do more than just future warfare all the time.

Lastly it's Infinity Ward, nobody that knows cares about Infinity Ward anymore, the last thing they made was Ghosts.

We are also only on the second week of Overwatch. That could have some impact on the pre orders they are getting right now. The real test will be in a month or 2 when the drought hits and the hype for Overwatch has died down. And peoples wallets have had time to regenerate.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Now, Activision...what have you learned? Oh...nothing? Alright then. Continue on your way then.

 

[KenAri]

Not to be that guy, but

Infinite Warfare has ten times less pre-orders than Black Ops 3 had the same time prior to launch.

ten times less

This would mean it has negative 2 million pre-orders.

1/10 =/= -10x. It has one tenth of the pre-orders.


Otherwise: I'm glad to see players finally talking with their wallets! Even though I'm pretty sure a large number of people are just riding the bandwagon and aren't sure why they should hate IW, and whether or not IW deserves the level of hate its getting is another topic. But I'm glad people are at least realising that they do have a say. For better or worse.

 

[VirOath]

Isn't this because of the Modern-warfare remaster bullshit? Because if people are getting tired of yearly cod, the decline shouldn't be this drastic. Or the fact that the setting is too far forward in the future that they lost their main demographic?

Moving outside of the comfort zone in terms of setting for a large demographic of sales wouldn't move the needle much, if at all negatively for large brands with a strong following like CoD. The majority of those that would be upset about the game would still buy it for the gameplay experience itself due the brand name.

Though I would like to think this is a backlash to locking CoD4 behind $80 dollar versions of the game, I wouldn't say that decline due to consumer weariness would be less drastic. Markets in general are not like an elastic band where more and more resistance is applied as you stretch it thin until it finally snaps: you don't see a slow decline of something before it no longer being economically viable to produce. Rather it is much like a steel beam: you place more and more strain on the market and it may make a lot of noise but it generally won't move much until something snaps and the entire thing comes down like a house of cards.

Consumer revolts are always signaled first by a lot of noise (though not all loud noises in the market lead to consumer revolts) and appear on the bottom line as sharp losses in sales. A slow decline in sales is normally the sign of a failure in marketing for the new product or a product that is not meeting the needs or wants of consumers as each iteration of the product is produced.

As much as I would love for these numbers to be due to business practices in dealing with the CoD series, I would have to say that market weariness for the Modern Military Shooter (and even the more recent future settings of CoD have not stepped beyond aping the current Modern Military Shooter design) combined with the release of a significantly deviant setting and experience of WW1 with BF1 are causing the loss of Pre-Orders for CoD, just as we saw significant success with CoD4 giving birth to the significantly deviant setting and experience of the Modern Military Shooter when the market was saturated with WW2 shooters.

There is also the chance that this is just market resistance against Pre-Orders as there have been a few titles in the past two years that have had significantly lower preorder sales while still hitting high post launch sales, that there was no correlation between the low amount of preorders and the end amount of total launch window sales.

 

[talker]

It's weird, because my stances on these two games are entirely reversed. I haven't played anything from these series since the first Black Ops, but Infinite Warfare has gotten me interested. I'm genuinely interested in the story, and space fighter combat/zero-gravity combat is something I'm looking forward to. Meanwhile the idea of a black, American protagonist in a WW1 game has left me with nothing but disdain for the developers.

 

[Alma Mare]

So we have oficially arrived at the point that we're so knee-deep in the shit that is preorder culture that a game can be already labeled as a failure if it fails to meet preorder goals, ie even before the damn thing actually exists.

slowclap.gif

 

[Floppertje]

It's weird, because my stances on these two games are entirely reversed. I haven't played anything from these series since the first Black Ops, but Infinite Warfare has gotten me interested. I'm genuinely interested in the story, and space fighter combat/zero-gravity combat is something I'm looking forward to. Meanwhile the idea of a black, American protagonist in a WW1 game has left me with nothing but disdain for the developers.

Why does the idea of a black american protagonist cause you to feel so much disdain?

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Didn't they try to resurrect the Rockband franchise at some point? Given how they favour reacting over acting, I wonder what franchise they will next try to unintentionally run in to the ground.

Harmonix is Rock Band. Activision is Guitar Hero. Also, being one of the people who own Guitar Hero Live, it's actually a pretty fun game. Just so you know. And still getting active support from Activision beyond just patches, with new songs being added online fairly often.