Will Call Of Duty ever be unpopular?

The Monday Letters page asks whether data mining is ruining the fun of game announcements, while a reader tries to imagine Xbox without Microsoft.

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War without end
Now that we know Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 is coming out this year, we’re going to have months of leaks until it releases in the fall and the whole thing starts over again. Then in January we find out that this was, as always, the first or second most successful game of the year. So…will this ever stop?

Microsoft hinted that they might stop annual releases before buying Activision, but of course that’s all stopped now that it’s one of Xbox’s main sources of money. But if we ignore all that, is there anything that will ever put a dent in Call Of Duty’s popularity? So that it’s not always one of the biggest games of the year?

Personally I don’t see it. If something as bad as Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t turn people off, nothing will. And while soldiering is in theory something easy to copy, no one has been able to do that in the last twenty years, and every year Call Of Duty gets huge, the mountain to climb gets bigger and bigger. I honestly think that Call Of Duty will still be around in twenty years, and as big as ever.
Campbell

Data breach
Personally, I agree with the idea that data mining, and most leaks in general, ruin the fun for fans, but I place the blame for this squarely on the publishers. Firstly, they don’t seem to make any effort to hide this information, implying that they want it to be found, and secondly, the complete lack of official announcements these days means we have to get our information from somewhere.

I just wish there was a way to data mine PlayStation and find out what the heck Sony is playing with right now. Although I guess no one is crazy enough to put their business plans in random computer code for anyone to find. No, they leave that to the vacancies.

Oh and, again, guess who never gets datamined? Nintendo. What a shock it is to discover that they are sensibly careful with their information and no one else.
Kreacher

The people in charge
I liked last weekend’s Reader’s Feature about the people in charge of gaming and how they clearly have no personal interest in video games. I would go a step further and say that the real problem is that they have no interest in the long-term health of the industry. Bobby Kotick would laugh while it burned if it meant he’d make an extra $1, but even people like Phil Spencer clearly don’t care that much.

What will he think when he looks back on the sector in ten years and everything is in tatters? The entire industry was thrown off balance as he pushed to buy Activision Blizzard while simultaneously destroying the future of Xbox hardware. Or Jim Ryan, who realizes he was the one who destroyed 30 years of dominance with the mad rush to create risky live service games.

The truth is that no one should be in charge of creatives except the creatives themselves, and yet they are often useless at it. That’s not a problem unique to gaming, but gaming is particularly bad at dealing with it.
English

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Crazy George
Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max game was great. I wish they would remaster the game, with all the DLC they had planned. No disrespect to George Miller, a world-class film director. But he clearly doesn’t know video games. I can’t think of anyone worse than Hideo Kojima to play a Mad Max game. It would be a cutscene, with Kojima doing his best to impress his hero.

I’ve never been on the Kojima hype train, but recognize his talent for directing action scenes. I never understood why he didn’t use his talent for directing films? Put it this way: I’d be more interested in his directorial debut than his next video game.

It’s good that the ex-Avalanche Studios developer is speaking out and defending the game. I would describe the game as a cult classic. I won’t blame George Miller, I can’t wait to see Furiosa. Mad Max: Fury Road was great.
Anon

Turning point
With the rumors of a Blue Dragon comeback (a remaster, I assume?) I think we’re underestimating how influential that game was on Xbox. Microsoft put a lot of effort into financing and marketing that at the time, and… it did absolutely nothing for them.

I’ve never played it, but every comment I’ve ever heard about it is that it wasn’t very good and just a bit generic, despite being done by the creator of Final Fantasy. I wonder if its failure, despite seeming to tick all the right boxes, is why Microsoft has simply given up on Japan and doesn’t think it’s worth it.

I’m sure there were many other things that led to that decision, but it did seem to have an impact.
SterlingC

Too much money
I realize it’s just a false rumor, but even the idea of ​​Microsoft buying Valve gives me the creeps. If this were to happen, I assume the FTC would win this time and prevent this from happening, or (perhaps more likely) after it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster for a few years, in terms of industry competition, Microsoft would be broken up and would be forced to sell. of Xbox as a separate company.

What interests me is whether they would have better luck? It seems increasingly clear that many of their recent decisions are being made by people above Phil Spencer, but if they had been divorced, they wouldn’t have been able to even afford Activision Blizzard or maybe even Game Pass.

I know he’s an easy punching bag at the moment, but I still have a lot of time for Phil Spencer and I suspect that if he made his own decisions he could probably handle things better. More importantly, he wouldn’t have Microsoft’s infinite funds to fall back on and would have to build first-party studios much faster and more organically than he does.

I honestly think that having too much money is Xbox’s biggest problem, and knowing that they can always raid their parents’ bank account if something goes wrong has held them back more than helped them. Although I suppose most of the damage has now been done.
Focus

Total cat astrophe
I just wanted to compliment you on your review of Little Kitty, Big City and the fact that you didn’t make a single cat-related pun in the process, no easy feat for a journalist.

Anyway, it seems like a fun game, if not entirely purrfect.

Stephen, Manchester

GC: That tagline for the review was “the cat’s meow.”

Forever self-destructive
So we’re just a few weeks away from the Xbox summer showcase and if the rumors are to be believed, this is going to be a mess of mixed signals about their future in the industry and capitulation to more of their games being multiformat.

What makes that so bizarre to me is that this year is the first time Microsoft is releasing a range of diverse and interesting games, and both Sony and Nintendo currently have absolutely nothing of note planned for the rest of the year. You’d think this would be the Sbox camp’s sigh of relief that things were finally going their way and they could regain some ground.

• Hellblade 2
• Granted
• STALKER 2
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The only problem I see is that Microsoft isn’t Nintendo and is struggling to produce the 9/10 games needed to take the console to new heights.

Hellblade 2 is a bit of a Marmite game and I respect that some, like you, find very little entertainment in it, while others find it exceptional as a visual and narrative package with functional but unobtrusive gameplay that doesn’t compromise its other qualities.

Known for Obsidian and the legacy of Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick Of Truth and The Outer Wilds should have roleplaying nerds drooling… it just seems to be happening complete indifference online and from critics (maybe everyone is only thinking of Alpha Protocol).

STALKER 2, with the original being highly regarded and the added value of it coming from a Ukrainian developer, should have a huge buzz around it and has real potential to be a very good game.

Then Indiana Jones, which is a shame, but the idea of ​​MachineGames doing an Indiana Jones game in first person is as close to a “take my money” moment as you’ll ever see.

If everything comes together well, you’re looking at a first party output of three Metacritic 90%+ games and one 80%+ game

But this is Microsoft…. as it stands, nothing is profitable and there’s a good chance that one of those games will be pitiful (please no Indiana Jones) and the others will turn out to be 70% games.
Irve77 (gamertag/PSN ID)

GC: If there’s one point of consistency among all video game companies, it’s their unerring ability to miss an open target. The indifference towards Avowed is purely due to the fact that no one knows about it – Microsoft has barely mentioned it and yet it’s apparently coming out this year. Same with STALKER 2.

Inbox is also running
My predictions for the Switch 2 are as follows: it will be an improved version of the current Switch with additional upscaling of existing Switch games. That’s all.
Francis

GC: You really go there.

100% agree that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the best Nintendo game. I’m playing the remake now and it’s exactly what the game deserves.
Townsend

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