New 'Call of Duty' Draws Harsh Reviews After Rushed Development 25
The latest entry in Activision Blizzard's popular Call of Duty video-game series was made in half the time of previous iterations, a fact that may be contributing to a spate of bad reviews about the game's storyline, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the development process. From the report: Critics have panned the game, the first big release since Microsoft closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision last month, saying the storyline feels rushed. Most Call of Duty games are developed in around three years, but the bulk of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which comes out Friday, was made in less than a year and a half, said the people, who asked to not be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The abridged production schedule proved stressful for the development team, they said.
Call of Duty has generated more than $30 billion in revenue over the last two decades. It's the most important series in Activision's portfolio, with thousands of developers across the world. New Call of Duty games will always top the charts, but some of the makers of Modern Warfare III say they hope their new corporate owners don't judge them too harshly for the negative reception after a shortened development cycle that was beyond the studio's control. The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.
The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.
Call of Duty has generated more than $30 billion in revenue over the last two decades. It's the most important series in Activision's portfolio, with thousands of developers across the world. New Call of Duty games will always top the charts, but some of the makers of Modern Warfare III say they hope their new corporate owners don't judge them too harshly for the negative reception after a shortened development cycle that was beyond the studio's control. The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.
The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.
So is it cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since it was done in half the time, I expect it would be significantly cheaper. Labor is a big part of the development costs.
NOPE [walmart.com]
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They want money, but overpricing things to hell is not always the best way to get the maximum amount of money.
There's a balance to that and they're probably not even close to it
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As a Zero Punctuation on an earlier Call of Duty put it, "Hohohoho, Yahtzee! I can see why people say you're a funny guy!"
Last gasp of Activision (Score:2)
While from the economic perspective consolidation of the industry with the Microsoft buyout is not something I like as someone who likes games I am looking forward to these companies having new management.
Jason Schreir doing a bunch of work lately also had a story about the first impressions at Blizzard to the buyout and generally reporting positive things
Blizzard Boss Is Optimistic About a More Independent Future Under Xbox [bloomberg.com]
Now of course big new owners are moving in, nobodies gonna wanna talk shit out the g
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Activision themselves hasn't done anything since the late 90s. Their massive success with games like Mechwarrior 2, Metal Gear, etc. in the mid-90s seems to have fizzled out pretty quickly - I don't remember what happened there, but they haven't self-published a game since around 2000.
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I believe in the late 90's they basically just turned it into a holding company/publisher and bought other studios.
Storyline feeps rushed? (Score:2, Interesting)
Greed? (Score:2)
Some VP needed their promotion/bonus?
Paywall, can't read (Score:2)
stop posting stuff from bloomberg
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Hasn't Been Good In A While (Score:3)
The CoD series hasn't been good in over a decade. It's been essentially the exact same multiplayer, with the exact same systems, with a bad single player story. The unlocks and prestige system is garbage for morons.
What story? (Score:2)
The buried lead here is that people noticed that there was a lack of a story in a FPS game...
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Storyline's important, who knew?
You can only sell so much on graphics, improved multiplayer, etc...
And if you don't spend the money to improve the product, how do you distinguish yourself from last year's version? I mean, at least the sports games can do things like include updated professional player lists/stats/
Not possible (Score:3)
You're saying Microsoft and Activision rushed a product to market before it was ready? Who do they think they are, Bethesda?
It's an absolute shame that Blizzard was acquired by Activision. That was the beginning of the end for them. It's absolutely amazing that games like Mechwarrior 2, Battlezone, or Heavy Gear were ever produced/distributed by Activision in the 1990s - nevermind all in the same year, given what kind of garbage half-produced games have come out of them since. There hasn't even been an actual Activision studio-built game in over 20 years at this point...
If only Valve would go back to producing games. They were one of the few doing good work for a couple years. At this point, all the good titles are coming out of independent developers, like CDProjektRed. Everything else these days is a marketing exercise.
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If by "recently", you mean "since at least 1995", then absolutely. That's every Windows release ever. They did it with everything on the Xbox at first, and were effectively saved in that department by buying Bungie and doing a hasty game port of Halo.
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One of the best third person shooters I've ever played, Oni, was effectively EOL'd by Microsoft's acquision. It was a fantastic single player game with great graphics and gameplay with great reception, with multiplayer planned at launch. None of that happened, and the game was effectively killed off immediately.
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The Microsoft acquisition was completed on October 13, 2023, that is some record time to ruin a project but when Microsoft sets a goal they sure do meet it.
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Diablo 3 came out in 2012, after Starcraft 2 and WOW: MOP. D3 was okay but the included AH just ruined the game for me. You got to the point where you spent more time looking through that for upgrades as opposed to just doing runs. Boring. WOW: MOP had promise but I hit my breaking point when they added in ways to upgrade your gear with some random currency, which really just added yet something else I had to do to be raid-ready. Like fuck, I hate doing dailies and you just added in more reasons to force me
Re: Can I play as a deaf black girl... (Score:1)
Can I play as an aging armchair nazi, who's only skill is trolling internet forums?
Sony's Probably Pissed (Score:2)
"We extracted a long term commitment from Microsoft... now they're going to ruin the franchise. We'll get feature parity of 'suck'."