General Gaming CoD Cr(y)sis: Activision "fires" Sledgehammer/Raven as CoD 2K20 lead studios, Treyarch takes the reins (Kotaku/Schreier)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Mr.Vic20]

Bro No! 

[Keyser_Soze]

So what went wrong?

[Dre801]

Reminds me, I'm overdue for another playthrough of the OG COD campaign.   It's been a few years.

[Brick]

Wtf? That's a surprise. It's time for this franchise to take a break. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

"Hey Treyarch, guess what! We just shaved a year off your development time for Black Ops 5! Have fun shoveling that out the door!"

[Dodger]

Treyarch is the main CoD team now though right? I thought they had been for awhile.

[Remarkableriots]

It sounds like both games are being combined instead of one team being fired. The work that Sledgehammer/Raven was doing will be the single-player campaign while Treyarch does the multiplayer content. Both games were already set during the cold war.

[Brian]

Activision can't afford it financially to have a bad year from CoD. 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

Activision can't afford it financially to have a bad year from CoD. 

 

But they made record profits 

[Mr.Vic20]

9 hours ago, Remarkableriots said:

It sounds like both games are being combined instead of one team being fired. The work that Sledgehammer/Raven was doing will be the single-player campaign while Treyarch does the multiplayer content. Both games were already set during the cold war.

Cold war/Hot fusion! 

[Brian]

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

But they made record profits 

While also announcing layoffs, a dividend, and a buy back, which are all signals that point to a weaker forecast. This is reflected in a stock that has lost close to 50% in a year. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

They have to be quaking in their boots, with the continued rise of FTP battle royale games.

 

CoD is on the decline -- the only question is how fast/far it will fall.

 

And Activision doesn't seem to have an answer going forward.

[Keyser_Soze]

36 minutes ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

While also announcing layoffs, a dividend, and a buy back, which are all signals that point to a weaker forecast. This is reflected in a stock that has lost close to 50% in a year. 

 

Well how else is Lord Kotick going to get more money?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

13 hours ago, Dodger said:

Treyarch is the main CoD team now though right? I thought they had been for awhile.

Treyarch is indeed the "main team".

[JPDunks4]

The big issue I see is the yearly releases really create a huge issue with the long tails on spending. 

 

I'm not going to invest much additional money into a game for Skins and all the other bells and whistles if that game is gone in a year and I have to restart that investment process on new skins.  Fortnite, at least to this point, you know if you're spending money on it, it's gonna be around for awhile.  Apex seems to be this way as well, even though their monetization is terrible at this point. All those games and others like Overwatch, ect all are games where you feel safe investing some money in cause they will be around awhile.

 

CoD, I was like, if this game is essentially gonna disappear and start new in October again, why the hell am I gonna spend any additional money on any kind of cosmetics only to lose them.  

 

They need to figure it out if they care about those long tail revenue steams.  I saw it suggested to seperate out the Battle Royale Mode completely as a F2P mode, and have it continue to evolve with new maps yearly based on each studios older games, and keep adding to it rather than starting from scratch each year.  Until they announce something like that, no way I'm spending anymore money on it.