Call of Duty series tops $3 billion
Although I still have my issues with the PC version of MW2, a big congrats to the folks over at Infinity Ward as their series has topped $3 billion!
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2732706220091127
http://kotaku.com/5413847/3-billion-worth-of-call-of-duty-sold
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2732706220091127
http://kotaku.com/5413847/3-billion-worth-of-call-of-duty-sold
"If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history," Activision Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said in a company release.
Replies
prolly the ones all the CEO's and programmers are hogging.
if management get bonuses that other staff dont get, feel free to upload kiddie porn on to their PCs then call the cops
Malus: Dude we even got bonuses at Fuzzyeyes man, whats going on over at Krome ?! :P
Not as an economics for the industry thing. But in terms of business planning, employee management and game design tactics and funding thing. The bad things that this company can and will do will be covered up under, "Damn look at all that green!"
I wonder and would like to know, if any, and I mean any of the the guys at Infinity Ward felt that they have lost their integrity and left. I would understand if they did after their bonus.
Get money get paid.
Congrats to everybody in Call of Duty
Yup, I would love to see more of these financial success stories rather than studios closing down.
Congrats to the Infinity Ward team! I really do hope you all guys and gals in production get a nice chunk of that $3 billion.
Of course I'm not saying 'shame on IW' for making a game they wanted to make. More shame on the publishers and shame on the people who bought it. The fact that it has sold so much just sends the message that you can sell a game does so much wrong, and make millions is a something that I never wanted to see.
hi,
we are in gen y era, where social competition is much more appealing than single player hardcore games.
it is logical and make sense to making games that represent majority audience.
I dont like MW2 too, it is just not my game and never will be.
but that doesn't mean my opinion represent the one who like it. the success is combination between creativity and marketing skills.
but again you should be happy with their success,
that means games industry still have some exposure, money remain invested to this industry and it means this industry still breathing.
Ideals, creativity and quality will comes along with financial freedom.
Seriously in a thread about how awesome a game is selling if you think it's a bad thing it's making that much money you should go make your own IP and show they world what you think they should be playing.
I say what most here are saying -- congrats to the IW team, you guys are amazingly talented and hardworking.
and u always get betrayed first time is fun all the other start to became frustrating lool..
but still a nice overall work. the next-gen games are becoming more and more minigames ^^
miss u FF7 , Tomb raider 1,2,3 ^^
Infinity Ward loved working on CoD, and even fought REALLY hard with Activision Marketing to get away from WW2 and place it in a modern setting. I'd be willing to bet the biggest fans of the CoD series are the folks over at Infinity Ward.
The CoD the series was a labour of love to begin with. IW started as the Medal of Honor Allied Assault team, that wanted to make a more cinematic type experience with scripted events to tell a story (a la Half Life 2), that EA didn't have much faith in.
They're making the games they REALLY wanted to make, and IMO that passion really shows in the final product.
IW didn't cater to the mass market, the mass market came to IW. Prior to MW, the market was flooded with WW2 games, and they (along with DICE) had the balls to break free from that.
People who are pissing on how BAD the game is really need to take a reality check. It's one of the highest rated games of all time, one of the best selling entertainment releases ever, an INCREDIBLY high quality product, a very likely GOTY winner, and even if you didn't personally like it, you at LEAST have to respect it.
The series stands on its merits as one of the most influential.
And BTW, I know a few artists at IW and the bonuses are the highest I've ever heard of (beating out the ridiculous numbers from the early days of Blizzard North). There's a reason they attract REALLY high level of talent, and why they have VERY high employee retention.
maybe x20, just a gut feeling
The mass populus has a great liking of trash at the moment, Twilight, Transfomers as two examples. You can argue that their brilliant aint they, but they arent compared to media within their own realm. They just do the few things right that they need to and at the right time. A saving private ryan, band of brothers esque game is about as mass market as you can get.
Mw2 is war porn, it has pretenses and delusions of being more, but it works because it appeals to the lowest common denominator. All it does is take movie cliches, then plays them back at you without any choice at all. Less choices than Killer 7 and that was taking the mickey out of these sort of games.
Its kind of sad that this game is held up as the ultimate greatest supposed game or whatever. People looking from the outside in will say "So thats what their into, exactly what I thought they were".
If this is the game that influences loads of others then its even more sad.
The mass market is no great judge of quality, just what gets them off.
Now that makes me happy! When your company makes a game that makes that much money you better damn well get bags of cash!
How is making a game people want selling out? games are supposed to make money, giving people want they want makes money. How is that a bad thing?
If that is mass market trash, then I hope they make more of it. I got needs.
NULL > Killer 7
Killer 7 Choices == MW2 Choices
Killer 7 sense of humour = 1
MW2 sense of humour = NULL
Denying how well made this game is.. is just...confusing. To me it just sounds like you want to look special and artsy fartsy, hating just because it's popular. Which is wierd because like it or not, but MW2 is a piece of art.
IW found a system thats fun. thats what games are, they let you have fun. theyre not supposed to cater to roger ebert. games would never have come this far if they were designed to be thought provoking pieces of art. theyre supposed to be FUN to PLAY. IW has tweaked it enough so that they found an almost perfect system to make it as fun as possible (I'm talking about MP here).
if you want thought provoking, go read a book. im not saying there arent those kinds of games out there, but they dont make money. you can give it a shot and try to make one, and if it makes a shit ton of money id be all the more happy for you, really.
and on another note, yes, there were some bad decisions made with marketing, prices, and all that. some made by the dev and a lot probably made by the execs at acti. and im not even going to get into a discussion about all the PC stuff.
in the end, its a highly polished game that looks great, plays great and is a lot of fun. can you blame people for wanting to have fun? or the devs who deliver it?
its a FPS. you want choices? play an RPG. you cant buy a car and then hate on it for not flying.
FPS is human defined category which has no relevance, to cars flying or making coffee(cars have been made to fly). Games are just games, and what you are able to do in them. FPS, you must shoot things and only that? RPGs you must only have whatever it is RPGs do.
Every game must fit in one of these categories, every game must only do what is defined in one of these categories. Thats the kind of nonsense that is keeping games stuck where they are.
It wouldnt be so bad if a game like this didnt dangle the possibility of choices in your face. Or we could have made a response to that but we couldnt be bothered, we were too focused on that flashy effect.
Simply that it has deviated from it's core, the game exhibits many flaws that could have been addressed with the time and money that IW clearly had at their disposal. But since the game is a commercial success, publishers and shareholders will see these errors as non-events, or even shining examples of the right way to make games and customers happy. My original post was simply to wonder if anyone valued Artistry over money at IW, so that when their forums were alive with angry fans, and the money-making objective to ignore them came down from above: Did they lose integrity?
"MW2 > Killer 7"
That just proves how much one would care about mass market vs. artistry.
But Killer 7 has its place and respect, just as MW2.
Battlefield franchise > MW franchise ,
BF franchise = my war fetish
btw
game is like movie or other arts, some might like it, and some might not.
no matter how so many effort we put on that.
also "outside world" comments are much more scarier i guess ...
"I presumed it to be ridiculing the player and certain game types(FPS's). Just as Bioshock ridicules the player for going along with things, even when you had no other choice."
that was the best thing, you didn't just play the game, it played with you. I also didn't consider it ridiculing the player, but poking holes in conventions. It wasn't until that scene in Bioshock that I realized, "Hey I've always done what I was told to in video games. Just because I wanted that goodie or to finish the quest or beat the bad guy.
Thought-provoking is something that video games should do more often.
I can see what snacuum is saying to some extent, in that... because its a huge success moneywise all their wrongs are right. At the end of the day though, i am optimistic and if they decided to update the PC version or take heed to criticism then id be happy they did it.
Theyre not Valve and this isnt TF2 though, thats for sure - and i used to find TF2's casual appeal annoying haha.
The irony is MW2, tries to do thought provoking but falls on its arse.
And Bioshock, fails because there is a pretense of other choices. It tries to do what portal did but fails. Portal ridicules the player but, there is no pretense of having any other choice, and it has a decent pay off in the end.
I did what I did in Bioshock because that was all I could do. There's no revelation at all, it doesnt work. Its potentially pretending that we could have given you other choices, but to make this banal story(and save us time and money) no. Bioshock goes right along with all the conventions, it might be exposing them but, it carries right along with them. The ending is right up there with the ultimate conventions.
I'll admit some games try and fail quite well, but I don't like to discourage attempts at it. We will have to disagree on Bioshock then, I have gotten into many arguments with those who consider their ideals of good storytelling to be 'correct' and not 'opinion.' I don't want to find out which.
Actually you did have a choice in Bioshock when you realise you've been a sheep: Turn off the game and do something related to your tantamount freedoms. Of course that's not what the developers want and you're not meant to take it to that extreme, it's a game after all. If they provided such freedom, they would simply be advertising the freedom, rather than questioning it. You complain that it only provides and illusion of choice, something that put simply, is in all games we play. Everyone in the industry know just how much of game design is illusions, it's how well they do it that contributes quite greatly to their success.
MW2 really pushed the single player experience to a new level for the series, and did it pretty quickly. so yeah great work, and mad respect to the art team. Unfortunatley as a pc gamer i will have to say im not buying it. The removal of leaning, and of dedicated servers, has just about removed any reason id buy the game. It is unfortunate the route they took with this, but thats how games go sometimes, and no disrespect to the team but those 2 things make it easy for me to justify buying a different game instead.
This thread, to me, is about the success of infinity ward and i cant see how there could be a discussion on wether or not 3 billion copys sold is a success...
obviously people like their games. i know i do. You "true artists" and re-definers of the game medium needs to remember that sometimes people dont want invention, they just wont easy to chew, in your face entertainment.