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Games

Call of Duty Slumps Ahead of Potential Activision-Microsoft Deal (axios.com) 23

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Millions of people stopped playing Call of Duty in the first quarter of 2022, as one of gaming's top franchises continued to cool off, according to Activision Blizzard's latest financial results. From a report: Call of Duty is the biggest annual franchise in gaming, so any struggles can have knock-on effects for the rest of the industry. Activision Blizzard said its Activision-branded games -- which nearly entirely consist of Call of Duty -- had 100 million monthly active users in the first three months of 2022. That's down from 107 million in the quarter before. And it's down from 150 million in the first three months of 2021. The drop comes as Microsoft presses forward on a bid to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. In a press release, the company blamed the decline on "lower premium sales" for November's Call of Duty: Vanguard compared to November 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It also cited "lower engagement" for free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone and flat performance for its Call of Duty: Mobile title.
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Call of Duty Slumps Ahead of Potential Activision-Microsoft Deal More

Call of Duty Slumps Ahead of Potential Activision-Microsoft Deal

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  • None of which have cross play compatibility with each other. Even if I wanted to play CoD, which title do i commit my time to and will the player base leave as soon as the next version comes out.?

    Feel good you were able to keep it going this long. Maybe time to just make CoD a game as a service and instead charge a subscription and release new campaigns and maps for it and actually get the multiplayer balance refined over time. Warzone is the closest they have come to this but even then every other releas

  • They duct taped together 3 titles into one monstrous "launcher" with regular massive updates to the newer titles bricking the older titles. I can't get a coop game working in MW19, haven't been able to for months. Why should I invest my time in a title they clearly do not want me to play? Here's hoping Microsoft treats it's franchises better, and scrap the Battle.Net launcher in favour of Steam (I can dream, can't I?)

    • c o d warzone.
      c o d modern warfare.
      i am in orange county california.
      i have not been able to get on to war zone or modern warfare.
      period.
      bogarting servers is not a solution that works
      i upgraded to an xbox s.
      added a 2 terabyte memory card
      i am invested in the franchise by purchasing their respective ultimate editions.
      c o d has for me become a dog that will not hunt

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by TriCCer ( 591321 )
      Oh hey, look another 100GB update to warzone, I guess I have to download that to play Modern Warfare, an unrelated game. yay.
  • Can't keep selling the same title over and over forever... You soon get tired of having the player base disappear and having to pay $80+ for the next version which may or may not be any good. I wish they would just keep one version of the game and invest into it instead of this slash and burn development...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Then you get a subscription and a monthly fee. You will probably end up with both, honestly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by laxguy ( 1179231 )

      but see thats the best part - they CAN sell the same title over and over forever! they just have to not ruin the good things from each version and instead carry them forward! CoD fans love CoD the biggest issue right now is that the current games arent CoD that the fans know and love and instead of patches and updates and transparency, we get nothing.

  • CoD died after MW2. Every other release has been copy pasta.

  • The facts that:

    * people have COD fatigue and are tired of rebuying the SAME maps with each new version, and
    * there is huge churn where the player base abandons the last COD for the newest shiny,

    then is no surprise that the series is in "decline".

    IMHO the entire shooter genre started going down hill when EA started pumping out Battlefield sequels and Activision did with COD annually. COD:MW4 was innovative in that it added RPG elements to a FPS but since then the series has become stagnant.

    If you want your

  • Now that would be interesting, since all their current titles are just lipstick on the same old franchise. Games eventually do go into decline, it is just the way it is - most players move on to something new and interesting.
  • As an avid PC gamer, and long-time CoD fan, I was forced to finally abandon the series once it became clear that the prolific cheating problem was not going to go away. It seemed as if neither Activision nor Infinity Ward had any real intention or ability to suppress it effectively. Wall-hacks and aimbots are available for sale, often before the game is even officially released.

    • They have the ability they choose not to.

      Most of these so called "modern" multiplayer titles all use matchmaking as their infrastructure. Which has two major benefits for the publisher / developer:

      1. No need to run massive, read: expensive, servers that can keep track of the game state.

      2. Ease of shutting down the multiplayer component when the next release comes out.

      The problem, beyond the obvious profit motives, is that something still has to keep track of the game state. If the publisher / developer is

  • Wow, very interesting. I have stopped to play cod too, as I got battlefield 5 account for sale [rndplace.com] and now playing it whole day. Idk, maybe I will return to the COD too :D

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