Why does Call of Duty keep selling so well?

[Brian Hendershot]

Because you touch yourself at night.

And I thought I was going to be the smart ass of this thread...

Anyhow, the more important question is, why do these threads keep popping up? I mean does not one use the search bar?

To answer your questions, I assume it sales well because lots of people bought it. I assume they bought it because they think its fun or their friends bought it and they want to play with their friends.

If another one of these threads pops up again, I am going to hit a baby with stick. A very large stick.

 

[C95J]

why does there have to be a special reason? People think the games are fun, what don't people understand about that?

 

[Giftfromme]

This is not a rhetorical question, I really do want to know, especially as someone who stopped playing those games after Modern Warfare (I'm not that into multiplayer). I recently made my peace with the series after I realized that Activision has been releasing a new Call of Duty game every October/November like clockwork since 2005's Call of Duty 2, with Infinity Ward making games in the odd numbered years and Treyarch making games in the even numbered years. Thus I don't think of the games in terms of their subtitles or even sequential numbers but rather the year in which they were released.

But back to my question - why does the series continue selling so well? Do the new features really warrant such astronomical sales records? At least in games like Madden or FIFA you get an annual roster update (something that EA could do as a DLC but why would they do that when the games continue selling like hotcakes every year). I have come up with some theories:

1) Hype - people buy new games because they are truly excited to play them. This is the weakest of my theories because I don't believe that hype can get to so many people.
2) Quality - the games are just that good. Again, I don't really buy this. While these games certainly are excellent (yeah I said it) are they really that good that Activision can sell the same game over and over again with only minor tweaks and features (and a new campaign) between releases?
3) Player Base - this is the best explanation that I can come up with. Since the majority of people play these games for the multiplayer, once a new version comes out they buy it because they fear that their friends and online buddies will switch and they want to stay current. Of course their friends and online buddies will switch to the new version for the same reason, thus perpetuating a feedback cycle.

Anyway, what do you think? Because the sales figures are so huge I am interested in the overall driving force behind them. So feel free to say why you keep buying new versions, but keep in mind that it might not be the reason why the majority of people do.

One final point. As I was reading this before posting I realized that I made the assumption that the sales are driven by repeat buyers. While each new iteration certainly does bring in new customers, I do think that it is a valid assumption to make.

EDIT: After reading some replies, let me address a common point that is being brought up - it's fun. Sorry, but this just is not a good enough reason. There are lots of games that are fun, but they don't sell nearly as well as Call of Duty does. I don't think people realize how massive the sales are. Here are some rough sales figures:

Black Ops - 24 million
Modern Warfare 2 - 22 million
World at War - 11 million
Modern Warfare - 14 million

For comparison here are the sales figures for some other FPS games:

Bad Company 2 - 6 million
Crysis 2 - 2 million
Halo: Reach - 9 million
Halo: ODST - 6 million
Halo 3 - 12 million

It should be noted that Halo is an XBox exclusive, so that no doubt diminished the sales considerably. Still, it stands that CoD has been selling, year after year, in the tens of millions of copies. This is the main reason why I am asking this question - the sales are ridiculous, and simply saying that the game is fun doesn't account for that.

People think it's a fun game so they play it. In this case, a lot of people think it's fun and it sells a lot of copies. Marketing comes into it as well, but it's also a refined experience that many people can relate to and easy to get into it.

 

[asinann]

Because people that are in multi-player for the old game will move to the new game, depriving the people from the old game people to shoot at, and because these are multi-player games with a crap single player mod tacked on that takes the only reason to play the old one away. Honestly I think these shooters that release a new version every year are just another version of Madden: they release it yearly with minor "upgrades" and roster changes.

 

[Indignator]

Allow me to present a brief interlude in the "CoD FOREVER!!!1!!"/"I HATE PEOPLE WHO LIKE THINGS I DON'T LIKE" argument to explain why this sort of reasoning is going to be offensive no matter how you try to couch it in diplomatic hedges.

You can suppose that there are millions of people who have been somehow "tricked" into buying the game even though they don't actually like it.

Or you can supposed that these millions of people like the game and that many people have different tastes than you do.

Which one seems more reasonable and which one makes people who espouse it sound like bigger assholes?

Is this argument aimed at me? If so you missed completely and hit the strawman five miles in the opposite direction.

I am actually a defender of Call of Duty. I really liked the single player campaigns of 1, 2 and MW (I'm a PC gamer so I didn't get to play 3); I think that their shortness is justified under the "short but sweet" rule; I think that given the sales record Activision is more than justified in doing what they are doing; I think that the hate against this franchise is unwarranted; and, unlike some (*cough* MovieBob *cough*), I don't think the series is somehow ruining gaming. So don't give me this BS that I hate people who like things I don't like.

Not really aimed at you in particular.

However, there was this bit: "2) Quality - the games are just that good. Again, I don't really buy this."

Even if you think they're good, I don't understand why it's so unbelievable that they sell so well because they have incredibly broad and lasting appeal. Why does there need to be some other hidden mechanism behind their success? They came out with a great game, a lot of people enjoyed it, then they came out with a sequel that a lot of people also enjoyed, etc. Very few series manage as many games with such consistent quality and such lasting appeal.

To see why they sell so much without changing multiplayer gameplay significantly, just look at other popular games with large playerbases. Look at CS: huge playerbase, they released a new version (CSS) that changed things quite a bit and a huge segment of the playerbase didn't want to change over. The fact that they're not changing much of the gameplay shouldn't make it less understandable that the sales numbers are so high, it should make it more understandable.

Nor will I ever understand how people can say it's the "same game, just with tweaks and a different campaign" with a straight face. You know what two games with a bunch of tweaks and wholly different campaigns are? Different games.

See the edit I added to my original post. The point is that the sales aren't just good, they are phenomenal.

As to saying that new iterations are the "same game", that was an exaggeration. I haven't played any of these games since MW, so I'm going on what I saw in the games I did play and the general consensus online (not the most reliable source, I admit). But even you seem to acknowledge that the differences between the games are fairly small. This doesn't make the games bad in and of themselves, just that for me a new CoD is not worth buying. I want to know why so many, many other people do find them worth $60.

 

[Revisisland]

probably just the fan base. we like one game and the next one comes out with enough positive changes that we continue to like and want to buy it.

 

[Indignator]

Because you touch yourself at night.

And I thought I was going to be the smart ass of this thread...

Anyhow, the more important question is, why do these threads keep popping up? I mean does not one use the search bar?

To answer your questions, I assume it sales well because lots of people bought it. I assume they bought it because they think its fun or their friends bought it and they want to play with their friends.

If another one of these threads pops up again, I am going to hit a baby with stick. A very large stick.

I did use the search bar, and I didn't find anything in the last three month. Why don't you stop being a smartass and point me to a thread that talks about this specifically.

 

[Indignator]

You're essentially looking for validation on your points, and the Escapist happens to be a good spot for this.

So yeah, you don't really care about knowing why, because anyone and everyone knows that the Escapist will mostly stick to one side of the argument.

Your psychic powers are extraordinary.

 

[German Borbon]

damn if i know pal

 

[Indignator]

It's fun. It's a simple as that.

Personally, i don't find "it's fun" to be adequate justification for the question posed. If the question was "why do you play it?" or "why do you keep playing it years after its release", then there is no better answer than "it's fun". But to influence so many people to buy a new copy every year, you need something more than that.

Thank you, you seem to be one of the few people who actually understood my question.

 

[42]

well I agree with the sentiment that It's fun, and that's what a good game is supposed to do, however the reason why CoD keeps selling so well is because the game is quite accessible, it's well marketed, while it tries to be realistic, it has a step above of reality to remind us that it's a game unlike Battlefield 3 which obsesses over realism. and most of all the people who keep buying it enjoy the game enough to KEEP buying another instalment. And is there anything wrong with that? no. I just don't get why everyone is looking for justifications as to why CoD continues to outsell it's previous titles and it's competitors. there doesn't need to be a justification, you don't need to find out if there is some sort of conspiracy behind it all. Call of Duty will always have a lasting impression on the games industry, and that's because its good at what it does. If you have a problem with CoD because it's not that good and a bit formulaic fine you don't have to play it, but don't try to stop others from having fun with it. christ this sounds like something a teacher would say.


Edit: and do we have to apply the fricking Casual label to everything that becomes popular? oh were the hardcore gamers fans leave angry birds before it became mainstream?

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Allow me to present a brief interlude in the "CoD FOREVER!!!1!!"/"I HATE PEOPLE WHO LIKE THINGS I DON'T LIKE" argument to explain why this sort of reasoning is going to be offensive no matter how you try to couch it in diplomatic hedges.

You can suppose that there are millions of people who have been somehow "tricked" into buying the game even though they don't actually like it.

Or you can supposed that these millions of people like the game and that many people have different tastes than you do.

Which one seems more reasonable and which one makes people who espouse it sound like bigger assholes?

Is this argument aimed at me? If so you missed completely and hit the strawman five miles in the opposite direction.

I am actually a defender of Call of Duty. I really liked the single player campaigns of 1, 2 and MW (I'm a PC gamer so I didn't get to play 3); I think that their shortness is justified under the "short but sweet" rule; I think that given the sales record Activision is more than justified in doing what they are doing; I think that the hate against this franchise is unwarranted; and, unlike some (*cough* MovieBob *cough*), I don't think the series is somehow ruining gaming. So don't give me this BS that I hate people who like things I don't like.

Not really aimed at you in particular.

However, there was this bit: "2) Quality - the games are just that good. Again, I don't really buy this."

Even if you think they're good, I don't understand why it's so unbelievable that they sell so well because they have incredibly broad and lasting appeal. Why does there need to be some other hidden mechanism behind their success? They came out with a great game, a lot of people enjoyed it, then they came out with a sequel that a lot of people also enjoyed, etc. Very few series manage as many games with such consistent quality and such lasting appeal.

To see why they sell so much without changing multiplayer gameplay significantly, just look at other popular games with large playerbases. Look at CS: huge playerbase, they released a new version (CSS) that changed things quite a bit and a huge segment of the playerbase didn't want to change over. The fact that they're not changing much of the gameplay shouldn't make it less understandable that the sales numbers are so high, it should make it more understandable.

Nor will I ever understand how people can say it's the "same game, just with tweaks and a different campaign" with a straight face. You know what two games with a bunch of tweaks and wholly different campaigns are? Different games.

See the edit I added to my original post. The point is that the sales aren't just good, they are phenomenal.

As to saying that new iterations are the "same game", that was an exaggeration. I haven't played any of these games since MW, so I'm going on what I saw in the games I did play and the general consensus online (not the most reliable source, I admit). But even you seem to acknowledge that the differences between the games are fairly small. This doesn't make the games bad in and of themselves, just that for me a new CoD is not worth buying. I want to know why so many, many other people do find them worth $60.

The "same game" people unilaterally ignore the fact that each game has an entirely different campaign. If you completely ignore that, then yes, they're almost exactly the same and subsequent iterations amount to expensive patches.

As for why people pay $60: if you took one of my favorite games and said you'd patch the multiplayer for $60 (even without giving me a whole other campaign), I would do it immediately. People make a big deal out of how much money $60 is, but really, gaming is one of the cheapest ways to spend your time. Going to see a movie? Good luck making it out of there without spending about $10 an hour. Going to a bar or a club? At least that much. Same for dinner at a restaurant. And none of these have any replayability. So I've really never understood the "how can people possibly justify spending a whole sixty dollars" side of things.

The new campaign alone is going to be a cheaper way to spend my time than virtually anything else I'd be doing would be.

Put another way, if the games were cheaper, would it really be so much less surprising that the sales were so incredibly high?

 

[Viral_Lola]

For me, it?s Captain Price. I love that crazy old man.

 

[silent-treatment]

Why do movies like The Expendables do well? Why is Justin Bieber popular? Why is the main stream main stream? Easy it's accessible. It is easy to get in, have fun, and get out. One does not lightly play hardcore games just like people dont lightly get into David Lynch films.

 

[silent-treatment]

Edit: Double

 

[michael87cn]

I don't rightly know, I don't find it fun personally, and I don't find it to be a shooter either. It's more of a marksman game. Shooters imo are games like half-life, duke nukem, quake, etc. Marksman games require you to be 100% accurate because bullets really kill with 1 hit and you can die in one hit too!

Sounds too much like real life to be fun to me.

Basically... I have wondered the same thing myself.

 

[DracoSuave]

It's the game a lot of people want to play.

You can put forth the argument that its gunplay might be unbalanced... you can say that its story is meh, you can field all sorts of criticisms at it...


...but it's the game people want to play.

It's not the michelin star of gaming. It's not supposed to be some high-level gaming experience. It's basic, meat and potatoes gaming. It's fun for fun's sake.

I mean, you could say that, yes, it allows you to run around and do a lot of broken shit in a fps. And... if you didn't think THAT WAS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT then there's just no explaining it to you, because you'll never understand.

 

[Uncle_Brainhorn]

After reading some replies, let me address a common point that is being brought up - it's fun. Sorry, but this just is not a good enough reason.

Yes it is. That's a straw man argument. You're implying that anything that's fun should sell as much as anything else that's fun.