Call of Duty hasn't had a fantastic year. Neither has publisher Activision, for that matter, missing projected earnings by a nice $300 million while their premiere military FPS bled over 50 million players. In a recent investor call, the company acknowledged the slump - and blamed Vanguard. Mostly.
In a largely deflective move, the company has identified two key reasons why Call of Duty, as an IP, has been underperforming for the past year; these being the World War 2 setting of Vanguard, and the problems Warzone is facing.
As a whole, the franchise lost 50 million active users, and the publisher claims that this huge number is mostly comprised of the free to play battle royale's apparently fleeting audience - beyond a dedicated core fanbase, the free to play model invites a lot of transient players who don't stick around.
The tone of the message definitely pinned a lot of the blame on the poorly selling and poorly reviewed Vanguard, last year's mainline Call of Duty title from Sledgehammer Games that once again revisited the popular - and arguably tired - WWII setting. The game's World War II setting didn't resonate with some of our community and we didn't deliver as much innovation in the premium game as we would have liked. Of course, the poor ratings and sales of Vanguard do come down to a bit more than that, having faced controversy over some marketing stunts being in poor taste before it even launched, only to be marred by bugs and a prevalence of cheaters in multiplayer. Most fans and reviewers weren't wild about the campaign, either.
