If you’re not a Dutyhead, you may have overlooked th🌠e f൲act that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launched last month. It’s easy enough to forget about a series that has a new game every year, and this year was particularly forgettable - not only because of its generic title, but also because of how poorly it was received. The reviews are abysmal, with the lowest review scores in series history both from critics and players. The most coverage this game has gotten comes from Christopher Judge’s light jab at it during The Game Awards and the wave of angry Activision developer reactions that followed.
If this was almost any other game, an overwhelmingly negative response like this would spell disaster. We know Call of Duty isn’t like other games though. In less than a month, it's already the second best-selling game of the year, and by Christmas it will surely take the lead, just as it does every year. If there was a year CoD would surely take a hit it would have been this one, but it just ain’t happening.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Shows That Crunch Isn't Going Anywhere
The latest block꧟buster shooter has been met with ▨fan disdain that could have easily been avoided.
I’m not surprised, but we should still consider what it means when a game with a 56 on metacritic is also the second best-selling game of the year. For one thing, it’s a good reminder that the vast majority of gamers are not that online, do not read reviews, and likely don't pay attention to Metacritic. They don’t review bomb, they don’t tweet or comment, they don’t send death threats to developers because the diagonal sprint speed is ten percent slower in the new patch, and they don’t care if the new Call of Duty is good or not. They’re going to buy it either way.
Call of Duty isn’t a video game series like GTA or Mario, it’s an institution. This isn’t a revelation - it’s stood outside of th⛎e rest of the game industry for almost 20 years - but this year’s entry represents the sharpest decline 🌳in quality we’ve ever seen, and it has had no impact on sales whatsoever. Even if most players can recognize that it’s a subpar game, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Which Call of Duty are these screenshots from?
The only other game series on this level is Pokemon. While the mainline games have steadily🦂 gotten worse over the years, sales have not taken a hit. In fact, each Pokemon game has outsold the last, despite declining review scores, negative player feedback, and an attempt at a boycott. But even in years when a new Pokemon game comes out, Call of Duty is still the best seller.
It’s hard to say what the future holds for Call of Duty, and whether anything will change under Microsoft’s leadership. But from an investor and business perspective, it's hard to argue there’s a problem when the sales continue to be this strong. Maybe building a bulletproof franchise is something worth celebrating, but it's a worrying sign when quality and sales are this far removed from one another. If a bad Call of Duty sells just as well as a good Call of Duty, why should Activision put time, effort, and resources into making a good one?
