Given the “disproportionate contribution” that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 provided to Activision Blizzard’s well-padded bottom line, it won’t come as a surprise that the next Call of Duty game is coming this holiday season. See? You’re not surprised.
Activision Blizzard confirmed its plans to “continue annualising” the first-person shooter franchise with the still-unnamed seventh entry in the billion dollar Call of Duty series, offering little new info. But executives did talk briefly about the game’s release window and their desire to see some subscription-style revenue from the series.
“If you think about the successes we have had in other categories on subscriptions, you can get a sense of the direction we want to take that franchise,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said during today’s quarterly earnings call.
Execs expected a less “friendly” release window in 2010 than the one that Modern Warfare 2 had in 2009.
While Activision Blizzard brass did not name the developer of the next major Call of Duty game, developer Treyarch has been linked to the next iteration.
Justin Robson
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:05 AMPlease be Vietnam, please be Vietnam, please be Vietnam… the franchise would be dead to me if MW3 was this year and by Treyarch.
And also, stop numbering them please… there was no such thing as CoD5… that’s the same as saying GTA Vice City is GTA 4… if we were being consistent with the numbering system, there’d be a looot more than five CoD games.
Dan Henley
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:44 AM6?
CoD, CoD2, CoD3, CoD4 (Modern Warfare, CoD5 (World at War), CoD6 (MW2) – see its not so hard. :)
Raytheon
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 4:53 PMYoure missing Big Red One, and another one i forget.
Doug Sherry
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:24 PMCall of Duty 7 is just a working title and, given the last couple games in the series, will end up with the format “Call of Duty: “
Mike
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:09 AMAs soon as this game becomes subscription based, I’m out. I’m finding that COD4 was the last best, it just seems now their in it for the money, not the players or game itself.
zaphodity
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 3:44 PMTotally agree.
Tonez
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 3:50 PMNo way? Game Developers are creating games to make money and not just to keep us happy? That’s ridiculous.
Ndroste
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:15 AMSounds like they’re ready to ramp up the annual rape to include a subscription for multiplayer which doesn’t even have dedicated servers anymore. It’s like paying to cook your own dinner.
Jumping to conclusions I know, but I don’t know what else to make of that.
Jay
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:58 AMDo you mean like eating at home? I’m confused…
Though I agree this has sinister overtones.
Tonez
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 3:52 PMActually Jay, I think he may be referring to those restaurants in which you get to choose your piece of steak and then go cook it yourself.
There aren’t heaps of them but they are apparently becoming more popular.
Stinky
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:19 PMRape implies unwillingness from one party, MW2′s buyers were all voluntary.
Prodigga
Friday, February 12, 2010 at 4:07 PMyou know what they could do… they could reintroduce dedicated servers, but provide said servers them selves and charge people that way. sure thats no way near as much money as they would get from subscriptions from every player, but a subscription based FPS with no sense of community etc is just asking for failure.
Brendon Schofield
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:25 AMThey just want to take advantage of the fact that it is immensley popular. On top of that i pay 79.95 for gold subscription and then supposedley subscription fees…..thats just ridiculous
Nathan Runge
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:28 AMWhen Infinity Ward first developed Call of Duty it was different and it was well polished. Now Activision have three developers working on pumping them out at break-neck speed and the quality’s just not there. I love Call of Duty, but I’m just not interested in a CoD game every single year. This is especially true considering, thus far, I’ve only been impressed by Infinity Ward’s efforts.
Cam
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:36 AMI would rather them spend their time developing an amazing title rather than pumping out a new one each year. How are any of their titles supposed to be memorable in the timeline of gaming if they just get replace in 12 months?
brad d
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:46 AMThe moment they introduce a sub fee is the moment this series will fail and die. yeah they’ll still sell a few copies but nothing like they are now and the sub fee wouldnt make it up unless its >$200/yr. go ahead craptivision, try us. there are plenty of other fps’s that are as good or better than cod. so we can dump you faster than you can say “oh crap, we renege!!”
on the subject of an annual cod, i’m happy with that. i’m usually bored with a game after a month. cod’s last a bit longer though. especially w@w with the zombie’s feature. that kept me going all year and i still play it now and then.
ChoM
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:57 AMHaven’t they raped this series enough. It’s time for a new ip seriously… The series has been on a downward spiral since number 2, 4 was ok but there are much better games out.
Michael Barnes
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:04 PMIts funny how Call of Duty WAS Medal Of Honors main rival and they are also going the same way as them. Nobody learns there lesson when it comes to milking a franchise. It will never change.
doubleDizz
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:17 PMYou idiots. They’re not going to make it subsctiption based. It says a “subscription-style revenue”, meaning a large spike in sales around the same time every year (ie: November), which would work similar to a business model based around annual subscription fees.
That said, I really hate Activision these days, and this kind of comment drives that feeling home.
Yes Activision, we know you’re a business and as a result, your aim is always money. But if I went into a car dealership and the salesman there said “I want you to buy this car cos I really want the commission,” I’d flip the prick the bird and go to the next lot. Know what I’m sayin?
oggob
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:54 PMYes, I agree they are a business and they are in in for the money…
However, you are wrong over the subscription suggesting…. they have said in the past they are looking at ways to take the series to a subscription based game and just look at direct quote…
“If you think about the successes we have had in other categories on subscriptions, you can get a sense of the direction we want to take that franchise,”
Every knows them as Activision… but remember the merge they had a while back, they are actually Activision Blizzard… and I believe Bobby is referring to a small subscription game Blizzard are best known for when he talks about “successes we have had in other categories on subscriptions”.
I can’t see why they would want another franchise to follow the World Of Warcraft subscription model, it’s not that profitable.
rpgplayer83
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:53 PMI don’t know about y’all, but I’m done with the Call of Duty series.
Kyall
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:45 PMAlthough I love the call of duty series, I can honestly say I don’t mind waiting 2 to 3 years for each successive release if it means the game quality will improve. Sure the quality of CoD is high since 4, but it’s basically remained the same for the last two revisions. It’d be good if they went at least 18 months to 24 months between releases and pushed that quality up instead of padded new content in.
zaphodity
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 3:47 PMCall of Duty : Ad Nauseam
Chris Guerin
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 3:58 PMI haven’t even played CoD MW2 yet, slow down Activision, stop shoveling games down our throats like baby food!
Sheesh!
/end rant
Matt
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 7:13 PMsubscription based? why? if so activision can go screw themselves, not pay more money to play
Cameron
Friday, February 12, 2010 at 2:12 AMI’d prefer to see updates and patches to MW1 & MW2 and they have the best multiplayer elements. Also needed is the return of dedicated servers as dealing with the slow internet of Australia and being placed in an American hosted game just ruins the experience.
All in all I believe that patches to the previous titles would prove more successful than annual releases. It’ll end up like the Need For Speed series, when no one bothers anymore because it’s the same game.
Marcel
Friday, February 12, 2010 at 1:49 PMAll hail EA/DICE for battlefield bad company 2