Although Call of Duty was the #1 franchise in 2016, Infinite Warfare’s sales were down compared to Black Ops 3. In the Activision Blizzard earnings call yesterday, COO Thomas Tippl called Infinite Warfare a high quality, innovative game, but admitted that “sales underperformed our expectations, and it’s clear that for a portion of our audience, the space setting just didn’t resonate.”
He continued: “We had a passionate, experienced studio deeply committed to this direction, and despite the risks we saw, we believe it is important to consider the passions of our game teams in deciding what content to create. While it wasn’t the success we planned, it allows us to protect a core tenets of our culture… empowering our talented teams to have the chance to pursue opportunities that they are passionate about.” Asked if they plan to change anything in Call of Duty 2017 based on the reaction to Infinite Warfare, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said:
With any longstanding franchise like Call of Duty, there’s a balancing act we need to strike between staying true to the things that people love about the franchise and also the need to never become complacent and to keep pushing for innovations to keep the franchise fresh and vital. I would argue, over a period of many years now, we’ve managed that balance on Call of Duty better than just about any longstanding franchise in any medium.
He added, “Last year ...