Call of Duty & WoW dips cause Activision Q2 financials to drop

@OG
If you are talking Acti overspending on marketing, then that can only get them so far. The games themselves have people playing for years and years. Multiple CoDs dominate the Live play charts. People play them because they enjoy them. They don’t even need to move on to the next each year because there is still a massive number of people playing the ones from MW1 onwards.

I wish for the return of the golden era when instead of shooting random people all day long you got to run around a plane as a bishounen accompanied by a three second midi loop, and press a button every now and then. It was way more satisfying.

Then you got to pay for a new videogame featuring bishounens, turn based one button random battles and lots of text boxes. A much better business model.

@OG, Damn rassfackulin know-it-all kids nowadays!!

Have a beer & enjoy the game

My team lost 42-41. Just not my day lol.

Just a note, DSB how many of those games you listed where on the current generation consoles? 10 years goes earlier then this gen.

BF had Modern Combat, Bad Co, Bad Co 2, and BF3. Also had a retro BF1943 on xbla.

The first releases were well spaced out, BF4 is coming one year after BF3.

Compare that to CoD. I believe it started with CoD3, then onward. And like BF they also had a XBLA release.

You see taking it back ten years(and across other platforms(PC) changes the focus of the conversation. First we were talking about Trip A releases on consoles this gen. Does it matter? I think it does.

Also how many MoHs came out this gen?

And this is what i am talking about. you folks just wanna argue. Your more concerned about trying to find holes in the way something is worded then actualy giving any thouight to what is being said.

I can’t see how that would matter. The numbers stay the same. Either they’re pushing them out the door or they aren’t, and they quite obviously have been for a long while.

What I commented on was the notion that this was somehow a recent development, which it quite obviously isn’t.

How is it more reprehensible that Activision are doing the same thing today, that EA started doing 15 years ago?

I didn’t even take into account that the price of those BF expansions, make Activisions DLC pricing look almost generous. It cost 30 fricken dollars per pack!

We can both agree that it’s an extremely cynical way to make a buck, and that it doesn’t exactly help games as a creative medium, but it’s pretty biased to ignore it when one does it, and not the other.

The problem here OG, isn’t that other people just want to argue. The problem is that you just want to repeatedly express just how much you feel that Activision’s annual big budget approach, which is embodied in CoD, is “bad for the industry”.

You seem to think that everything used to be on more or less of a level playing field, that the indsutry was in good shape, but that somehow, Acti came along with this ‘new’ IP canabalising method that turned everything upside down to the extent that you’re now hoping for CoD to fail.

““How long before the Call of Duty series is hurled to the wayside?”

Can’t happen soon enough for my tastes.”

What people have explained to you, but you’re refusing to even consider, is that this “Acti approach” that you seem to have such a problem with when it comes to CoD, was being exploited by EA long before Activision were anywhere near as big as they are today.

This approach was being exploited when the industry was booming!

Look again at comment #44. Look at that huge list of EA franchises.

The Maddens, the FIFAs, the Need For Speeds, the Burnouts, the The Sims, the Harry Potters, etc, etc, etc.

Tell me, honestly, have you ever wanted any of those big budget, genre dominating, annual franchises to fail?

EA used the “Acti approach” long, long before Acti ever did. They have even expanded on that into mobile now, and it’s Activision who are following them yet again.

EA are the leaders in these IP exploiting methods, and what you might not realise is that if they ever manage to topple CoD, they will have the number 1 game in almost every single gaming genre that you can think of.

That is their goal. They throw so much money into simply selling more than their rivals that they eventually win. (see FIFA vs PES)

So then where will the competition come from if hey ever manage to do that?

If anyone deserves ‘hating on’ for turning the industry into a corporate driven system rather than a creative one, then nobody comes close to EA. So why the double standards?

^ I’d say peeps are more willing to overlook EA’s “run ‘em into the ground” approach, because they happen to publish Battlefield, which for a few, was the antithesis of that ‘orrible, soulless CoD.

Plus they published Mirrors Edge and Dead Space! They were kewl and new and stuff.

Not sure how long this good will, will last tho. Seeing as EA don’t want to touch Mirrors Edge anymore (future kickstarter I bet), are turning Dead Space into Army of Two in Space and have forced DICE into a “make BF till it’s better than CoD!!” work regime. You gotta wonder how many more leads at DICE are gonna jump shit, due to “creative difference, needing to try something new” etc, etc.

And lets not mention Bioware

I don’t have a double standard in regaurds to EA vs Acti. They are both part of the problem at hand. Acti gets the attention here for two reasons. One is that the thread is about Acti. And second is that CoD is the king of yearly franchise releases.

For the record I am a sports fan, I bought NFL2K when it was for sale(Xbox one), and not EAs Madden. Then EA bought out the liscence. I don’t like Walmart either, but Walmart is the only dept store in the town where I live. My point is that like Walmart or not, you have to shop there.

Both EA and Acti(and I think to a lesser extent MS too) are companies that I think have done a good deal of harm this gen. Not for themeself of course.

I think it is just how the landscape of consoles have changed. It is the day of megapublishers and monitization. And I know that some of you folks won’t agree with me, but I believe that is what is driving people away. Beit smaller studios, or people from larger ones breaking away, beit mobile, social, PC, , or beit gamers that have stoped buying the fringe games from smaller publishers or gamers that have started gaming on other cheaper, fresher alternatives. It is ok for a franchise or a pub to have the spot light, but when that spot light is so big it covers most of the stage, there becomes less room for others.

I am sure that the case could be made that they are just sucsessful companies. Agreed. But when a small handfull of companies have too much control that will be bad for the industry as a whole. It is why folks don’t want just one platform(esp if that platform is closed like a console). It is also why inovation has gone out the window.

I know it prolly sounds like a wild ass statement, but I think the core console market is in real trouble, and I the reasons are staring us in the face. I also don’t feel that next gen will fix the problems, unless some fundamental changes are made from the top down.