So Black Ops is here, and lo, there was much rejoicing in living rooms and frat houses alike. Despite Activision’s conservative predictions that it won’t meet Modern Warfare 2‘s numbers, it’s certainly clear that plenty of people out there are still interested in the franchise.
And despite the controversy over Infinity Ward earlier in the year, particularly the unceremonious departure of Jason West and Vince Zampella of Infinity Ward in February, it certainly seems like the series has no intention of slowing down. Analysts are keeping a close eye on the sales figures, though.
“Black Ops is a pretty critical test for Activision,” Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets told Gamasutra yesterday. “What’s more important for the game? Is it the franchise itself or is it the developer behind the game? If Treyarch can sell just as many units as Infinity Ward, then that would mean the franchise is more important. I think unless you follow the play-by-play in this industry, you probably aren’t even aware of the drama. You’re more interested in the game experience, not whether a parent company is treating the people at a subsidiary well or not.”
Regardless, though, Infinity Ward’s diminished numbers does cast a big question mark over their future involvement in the series. They are currently working on something unspecified. But now there’s a third player in the mix: Sledgehammer Games, made up of former members of EA’s Visceral Games unit, amongst others.
Activision are, unsurprisingly, tight-lipped on the future of the series, sharing only the complete non-news that “the next Call of Duty title will be a first-person shooter, just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding there” via publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg.
But Sledgehammer Games is rumored to be working on a radical new direction for the series: one involving future tech and space marines. Despite the ridiculous Michael Bay-style plotlines, Call of Duty has typically had one foot in reality, at least as far as the tech featured in the game is concerned. To take the series into the future will be a big step, and one which carries plenty of risk. The Modern Warfare series in particular has attracted a lot of mainstream interest from players who typically wouldn’t have delved much further into gaming than Madden. Will taking the series into the realms of sci-fi—a genre perceived by some as inherently more “nerdy” than contemporary military maneuvers—alienate those people that Infinity Ward and Treyarch have spent so many years attracting?
Of course, who’s to say this will be the only Call of Duty title in the next year? Certainly not Activision.
“We have more development resources dedicated to Call of Duty than we’ve ever had before,” said Activision COO Thomas Tippl on their earnings call this week. “We think there’s a tremendous amount of appetite for Call of Duty content as well as services. We still have a large geographic expansion opportunity ahead of us. So we are very bullish on the franchise.”
So those who are already tired of the franchise? Better grit your teeth and get used to it—Sebastian thinks it’ll be around for some time yet.
“I would say there’s no empirical evidence that it has peaked and is now headed the other way,” he notes. “If you look at Madden, it had a 16-year run of increasing sales every year. There are precedents that when it’s such a well-loved franchise, it can grow for years.”
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