CoD sales will decline, in a few years the series will be put to rest GH-style, Activision will fall to a #2 position (if not more) because they relied so heavily on CoD they have nothing left but WoW simply as financial support.

The whole CoD and Guitar Hero argument may be flawed my the issue of large bulky expensive toy instruments.  Lets not forget that each itteration of the Guitar Hero franchise used new equipment.  Ther was backwards combatability but, you're also looking at 2 different markets.  Most people bought they're first guitar hero or rock band for this generation and we're done.  The Tony Hawk franchise, on the other hand, is a totally different issue.

By the way, great article, and welcome to the family, Patrick.

Call of Duty is a juggernaut. Look at how hard EA is already marketing Battlefield 3 to the public during the NBA playoffs.

I expect to see the next Call of Duty around the time of the Eastern Conference Finals (just like they did last year I believe) and will see the first demo of it at Microsoft E3 press conference.

I'm interested to see what they do with the next CoD...I just can't imagine any changes significant enough to fulfill its staying power.

The news machine starts chuggin'! Great work, Patrick. Giant Bomb somehow just managed to get even better.

The Call of Duty series has understandably garnered a lot of hate lately, but I don't see people actually acting on their discontent and boycotting these rehashed pieces of garbage. I personally know of several people who are critical of CoD and its repetitiveness, but whenever the newest game comes out, I see them playing it 24/7 on PSN. Guitar Hero was discontinued because consumers stopped consuming them after Guitar Hero XXL: "Bjork in the House." Do the same to this series, and at THE VERY LEAST you'll force them to (God forbid) innovate a little.

Hot damn this is a great article

I can definatly see COD pulling a GH, unless Activision learn from the mistakes and take it easy with COD


Who am i kidding? They are gonna milk in dry lol

WOW, welcome to the site!  Glad to have you!

" @patrickklepek said:

" @natetodamax said:

" @RsistncE

I'm kinda confused as to why people are jumping up on this Klepek guys dick...I see nothing special about this article. It's most just quoted material with some base analysis...but OK.

Because it's not a Brad Nicholson Kotaku-like article "

Let's chill on Nicholson, cool? "

I love that "Kotaku-like" is a big enough insult to have staff step in and tell people to chill.

Man, that site is atrocious.

"

Call of Duty: Free2Play coming soon.

" The Call of Duty series has understandably garnered a lot of hate lately, but I don't see people actually acting on their discontent and boycotting these rehashed pieces of garbage. I personally know of several people who are critical of CoD and its repetitiveness, but whenever the newest game comes out, I see them playing it 24/7 on PSN. Guitar Hero was discontinued because consumers stopped consuming them after Guitar Hero XXL: "Bjork in the House." Do the same to this series, and at THE VERY LEAST you'll force them to (God forbid) innovate a little. "

Linked here from Eurogamer - GB doing it big. Sick.

That was a pretty awesome article on activision good job Mr.Patrick. Now I'm curious on that bungie deal I wonder what it is.

" Klepek strikes early and hard. Nicely done!

Good read btw.

"

There is the fact that focus-groups for purposes of designing a game is barely more reliable than tossing a dart at a board with: "Have re-generating health... Corridor Shooter... Drivable vehicles" in post-it stamps on it. 

Audiences are extremely fickle and you make generalizations at your own peril. For instance, back in the days of when WoW was still in beta, a lot of us who were coming in from Everquest tried it out and thought that Blizzard was way in over their heads and that it wouldn't take off. Even Microsoft and Bungie themselves were discounting Halo: CE; they had a truly atrocious E3 presentation of Halo and the Xbox, and Bungie had to crash for an entire 9 months to basically rebuild THE ENTIRE GAME into a state where the game was fun, but there were a few things that slipped the cracks (how absurdly overpowered the pistol was, the similar looking corridors, the difficulty of "Truth and Reconciliation," etc). 

I dunno. Black Ops didn't so much leave a sour taste in my mouth as it didn't leave a taste at all. I enjoyed my time with the multiplayer this time around, but I don't think I will be buying a Call of Duty game for a long while.

Battlefield 3 seems like a fun action movie single player experience but I thought other EA games were pretty whack multiplayer experiences. I'll look forward to the next BIG call of duty release if there is one but I'm done with every buying their map packs since Bailout on MW2.

Great article!

So begins the Klepek era.

How did this site function without Patrick before?!

Nice job Mr. Klepek. This story has "Giant Bomb" being mentioned in every article on every news site that is re-posting this news.

This sounds like one of those talks from one of those higher-ups who don't get the details on things or is just trying to make things sound good.
The truth is that while it's easy to just say "we're gonna hire a bunch of guys and make them innovate", simply forcing them to focus on one franchise limits the amount of space and direction they can wriggle in. Take the GTA series - another franchise with ridiculous staying power that made COD level profits. After GTA 3, they had to make everything bigger, crazier and better - vice city. After that, SA. After that, they got flaked HARD for GTA4 precisely because it didn't feel like GTA. COD is pretty much stuck in the same spot - it's precisely because people have an expectation that innovation would be difficult, and there's only a similar array of directions for the franchise to head toward while other franchises that put more time inbetween releases (team fortress)/is straight up fresh(portal) can innovate and create gameplay that is unrestricted by previous interpretations of their genre.
Think about it. The multiplayer in BLOP mainly extended itself over MW2 mainly by its inclusion of new modes, new weapons/killstreaks/killstreak handling/weapons/maps/etc. None of these are revolutionary in the sense that they don't change the feel of the game - you don't feel the difference you felt moving from halo to COD or TFC to TF2 or even COD2 to COD4. And if a next-big-thing comes along, all the staying power is just gonna vanish (see: how UT3 died). They're gonna have to change their game eventually, and it'll ruin their staying power.
Then again, maybe COD players really are just that dedicated. who knows?

As much as I'd like to see a completely redesigned Call of Duty, I fully expect them to keep iterating on the current formula for at least another few years. They'll keep playing it safe until sales start to stagnate, and from there they'll either wise up and start innovating or drive the franchise into the ground completely, like they did with Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero. For the time being though, they're golden.

people have been shooting from a first-person perspective (and getting excited to do so) for decades. i don't think it's going away.

I can't see BF3 doing half the numbers, but that doesn't mean it won't be a better game.

Interesting stuff, looking forward to seeing more of these kinds of articles.

Its great to see how Activision views its franchise, though, how accurate it is, i would disagree on.  There hasn't been any really big improvements in a while.  MW1 was huge, a true innovation, 5 added zombies (which i don't care for but others do), which is really just another mode, and nothing super original(Horde Mode). MW2 was just a slightly better version of MW1. Now BLOPS has included wager matches, which is cool and new,  but i still see no great innovation on the scale Activision is claiming since the first MW.

I'm all for as much innovation as possible as long as it controls like a normal COD game.  Which in my opinion is unmatched when it comes to perfect control scheme/responsiveness.

"Guitar Hero had an incredible peak and then began to decline, whereas Call of Duty hasn't declined yet, so everything is fine."

Like, what dude?  Seriously?

This just sounds like corporate propaganda bullshit. If the people at Activision really have their heads this far up their own asses, I don't expect COD to still be making money much longer. Wanna know why else Guitar Hero died? ROCK BAND. Rock Band came along and did the same things as GH, but better. All its going to take to get rid of COD is another franchise that does things in a way better and more innovative way.

Wow, what a great debut for Patrick! Nice job and welcome aboard!

A question though,

 "Activision doesn’t always seem to get the credit it deserves in terms of innovation in my opinion, but there is no short supply of it, even in our narrower slate,"

Activision is just a publisher, right? What could they innovate? Distribution? Selling Modern Warfare 2 on Games on Demand for $60?

I think military shooters are the FPS genre with the longest staying power. One reason is that you can live your war fantasies and with the ongoing wars there's no shortage of templates and inspiration for your fantasies. It feeds of the "what if"s the same way GTA does(which is similarly popular)

Another reason is military shooters are quite simple. In games like Quake you had to adapt your playstyle to the weapon you're holding and the weapon your enemy has. In TF2 you have to learn the different classes and how to deal with the other classes with each one. In military shooters you either have a automatic rifle or a sniper rifle. You either sit around or you run around and whoever shoots first usually wins.
Ofcourse it has it's own depth, but the whole concept is a lot simpler. It's clear cut. If you encounter a tank, you shoot it with a rocket, if there's a sniper far away, you snipe him, etc. You know how to fight certain things without ever having to play a military shooter. You still have to learn how to move in them/how to apply the game mechanics, but there's no "what am I going to do in this situation?"
Among other reasons ofcourse.

that is really interesting that they seem to have that insight in their own products. Really good read though, thanks Patrick!

Activison and innovation? Ha, don't make me laugh (oh wait). But seriously, it wasn't Activision that innovated Call of Duty - it was Infinity Ward with Call of Duty 4. The game model of CoD4 was new and fresh, and still is, looking at sales of Black Ops. But Black Ops wasn't anything too special. Treyarch added a few new gun, bells and whistles, but the franchise has ultimately followed the same formula since CoD4. It's not because the franchise continues to innovate, it's because people just want more of that CoD4 formula. 

it is like guitar hero i just think it will take a little longer for it to die hopefully battlefield 3 will come close to de-throning it

Wow.  I hope to see a lot more articles like this in the future.

CoD sales have continued to grow, but to me it still feels like the continuing success of that franchise all stems from CoD4.  It's been like a snowball rolling downhill - CoD 4 was the initial push, MW2 and BLOPS were just the (almost) inevitable result of the momentum.  MW2 sold on the strength of CoD4, BLOPS sold on the strength of MW2.  Was BLOPS good enough to sell the next game quite so well?  Hard to say.

They're still working from the same blueprint that was laid down by IW.  Eventually this will become stale - it always does.  Treyarch have proven themselves to be competent at following the established blueprint, but no more than that yet.  The question is: do they have enough talent without IW proper around to come up with the next blueprint when they need to?  I haven't seen any signs of that.

I'm really interested to see how Activision handle this year's CoD in the face of how aggressive EA are being with Battlefield 3.  They've run at least one TV ad for that game already here in the UK, 6 months before it's gonna come out.  For the first time EA actually seem serious about going after CoD. 

The rumours put BF3 releasing the first week of November, and given MW2 and BLOPS came out the second week of November, that would make sense from EA's perspective.  Assuming (for sake of argument) that this BF3 date is true, do you think Acti will be happy to put CoD out a week after?  Or do they blink and try and bring their date forward?  Almost regardless of the games themselves, watching these two jockeying for position and going head to head should be a very entertaining way to end the year.

Man, I can practically taste the Activision bullshit coming fresh off the memo.

If this is the kind of news we can expect from Klepek alot then I must say I'm pretty impressed.

The only reason FPS has staying power is due to the amount of exposure we had since two decades ago from Quake to Duke Nukem to the MoH series. We have been conditioned to accept that shooting digital people is fun.

People love seeing that +125 after every kill... can't beat that...

" If this is the kind of news we can expect from Klepek alot then I must say I'm pretty impressed. "

Journalists all over the place are citing Giant Bomb as a news source for this story. How great is that?

won't releasing internal stuff like this get GB into trouble?

I think it is a testament to Activision (as much as I have distaste for them in general) that COD's sell better and better, year after year, after 7 years.
Keen to see if BF3 does indeed make a dint.

Actual Video Game Journalism!???? WHa Whaa WHAAA!!!???

I hope the internal memo stuff can't get the site in trouble, it was a good read however. Thumbs up. (two of them)

Cool article, it's interesting to see they're considering the same thing. However, I maintain they keep lucking out because they keep stumbling onto the next big thing. With no real hint at what that is next it doesn't look like they have anything other than Call of Duty to milk dry now. The thing that angers me most about Activision's business strategy is that it still appears to be working.

@natetodamax said:

" @RsistncE

I'm kinda confused as to why people are jumping up on this Klepek guys dick...I see nothing special about this article. It's most just quoted material with some base analysis...but OK.

Because it's not a Brad Nicholson Kotaku-like article "

Let's chill on Nicholson, cool?