COD INFINITE WARFARE. no really. - The Bear and Badger

IanHamlett

No CoD is in decline. Go back a few years and half of my IRL friends were playing it and every male workmate under 45. These days I know one or two people that own one of the last few. They've made a fucktonne off the franchise so I don't think they'll be crying over it but I think it would still be riding high, along with all their other big franchises, if they learned a bit from Nintendo.

Yossarian

The other way to look at that chart is that the last three figures put together are much higher than any individual one.

Facewon

But you could say the same about the middle three.

AJ

Or the first three.

AJ

Or any three chosen at random.

Facewon

Quite.

Hodge360

I think that's the point.

Yossarian

Yerp.

hylian_elf

3 > 1 confirmed.

Yossarian

Exactly. So why would a dev only put out one when they could put out three? Unless you're Nintendo and can just apply a lick of paint to three different franchises in the same time frame?

IanHamlett

Remember the bit about cannibalising sales? Mario Kart Wii wouldn't have sold 35 million copies if there were annual updates. They might have sold more than 35 million as combined sales of five games but they would also be paying to develop five games and running the risk of exhausting the market like with Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero.

Yossarian

So you're arguing that it makes more sense for a developer of a particular franchise to do one of those, wait several years with highly paid developers, artists and sound people sitting around and twiddling their thumbs so as not to cannibalise sales in the hopes that, when they do finally release a sequel, the entire world hasn't got bored and moved on anyway (obviously, not a risk for Nintendo owing to the lack of competition)?

Diluted Dante

Or they could make another game.

Facewon

Oh. I see what Yoss was getting at now.

Yossarian

Diluted Dante wrote:

Or they could make another game.

Yeah, new IP is almost guaranteed not to bankrupt you.

IanHamlett

The turnaround time for a CoD game is about 2 years. It used to flick between Infinity Ward and Treyarch. My plan would basically be to ditch Treyarch, although I don't think they're still structured like that any more. I haven't really kept up because me and almost everyone I know haven't played a new CoD for 5 years.

(or about $1.2bn worth of CoD)

Diluted Dante

They're on 3 year cycles now.

IanHamlett

Oh right. No thumb twiddling required.

Yossarian

Bungie did three year cycles, doesn't seem to have stopped large numbers of people getting bored with Halo.

Diluted Dante

Halo tried to become CoD, and abandoned the 3 year cycles though.

I'm not even saying all games should adopt a 3 year cycle. I think a 2 year cycle would help a lot of them though.

IanHamlett

GTA did long cycles and it did stop people getting bored.

Maybe Tony Hawk was always going to die after a few years. Maybe Gutar Hero did the best thing possible by cashing in on a fad before it died. Maybe 11 CoD games on PS3 was the perfect number.

All I can say for sure is I was excited by CoD a few years ago but years of the incremental updates turned me off it. If it was more like GTA I'd probably still be interested.

Yossarian

Re: Halo

Looking at Wiki, there were two years between 3 and ODST (which I'm not sure even really counts) then Reach the following year, two years to 4 and then 3 to 5. If you don't count ODST, then the only two year gap was between Reach and 4.

Yossarian

IanHamlett wrote:

GTA did long cycles and it did stop people getting bored.

Maybe Tony Hawk was always going to die after a few years. Maybe Gutar Hero did the best thing possible by cashing in on a fad before it died. Maybe 11 CoD games on PS3 was the perfect number.

All I can say for sure is I was excited by CoD a few years ago but years of the incremental updates turned me off it. If it was more like GTA I'd probably still be interested.

I got bored during GTAIV.

But yes, GTA's a very different proposition. Building an environment like that takes time. I'm sure if they could have knocked them out yearly they would have.

IanHamlett

To be fair though, I think CoD did the annual updates about as well as they could. You'd get a Modern Warfare every other year and World at War or BlOps in between. That meant you could play every other year without feeling like you'd missed anything.

Yossarian

I played MW and then nothing else and still didn't feel like I'd missed anything.

IanHamlett

So you didn't like GTAIV or MW. But I feel like at least you're forming the beginnings of a grasp of the basic concept I'm trying to convey. So they've done their job in this thread.

Diluted Dante

I think it's worth mentioning as well that only a year after Ubisoft said it would be stupid not to release Assassins Creed every year, they announced the series was no longer annual.

IanHamlett

AssCreed is another one that I wouldn't mind playing every few years but it's got more of a problem than CoD because all Ubisoft open world games stick to the same set of mechanics. In the past three years I've played one AssCreed and one FarCry and I feel like my cup runeth over. Maybe I'll be ready for a WatchDogs next year.

ShabbyMcCrabby

I think it depends on the franchise but I could definitely see the hype for GTA waning if it was released every year. It's such a big event when one comes out largely because it's been so long since the last one which I think gives you ideas that it will be all new and exciting. Even if it isn't that new or fresh.

IanHamlett

Yeah, even some really great games might show their flaws more if they came out every year. If all the Zelda games from Ocarina to Skyward Sword came out a year apart I might have skipped a couple.

Football games are on the other end of the scale. Their fans would riot if they didn't get at least a DLC pack with the new kits and transfers.

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