Critics will have little impact on "review-proof" Call of Duty: Ghosts, says analyst - Polidicks

[quote] Reviews of [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/call-of-duty-ghosts/"]Call of Duty: Ghosts[/URL] will have little impact on the game's sales, despite critics becoming dissatisfied with the franchise's yearly releases, according to Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz. "We think [Call of Duty] has become such an embedded franchise that it is somewhat review-proof," [URL="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-11-06-call-of-duty-franchise-is-review-proof"]said Creutz to GamesIndustry[/URL]. Pointing out that reviews of the recently released Call of Duty: Ghosts are in the region of 74 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic, Creutz said that "we think of [Call of Duty] as being like EA's Madden NFL, which continues to sell similar unit numbers year in and year out, regardless of reviews; Madden's Metacritic has ranged as low as 78 in recent years."[/quote] [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/critics-will-have-little-impact-on-review-proof-call-of-duty-ghosts-says-analyst/1100-6415991/"]www.gamespot.com/articles/critics-will-have-little-impact-on-review-proof-call-of-duty-ghosts-says-analyst/1100-6415991/[/URL] Rather depressing

This is why I mostly buy indie games, I've enjoyed many of them and seen a lot more potential than a dozen of the COD games.

It's going to be like Guitar Hero. Too many games, and the quality between them fluctuates so wildly people are going to stop buying it.

Pretty much. CoD's become so entrenched that there's legions of idiots drooling over this game who'll get it no matter what, blind to how bad it actually is.

This is hardly unique to Call of Duty and Madden. GTA5 had over seven million pre-orders, it could get panned and that would still be a huge chunk of change. Or, heck, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. That game was apparently profitable for Gearbox, and that's almost entirely thanks to preorders. Gamers being over-excited about appearance and franchise continuations are the problem here, not anything unique to one franchise.

They act like a score of 70/100 is bad

[QUOTE=redBadger;42777151]They act like a score of 70/100 is bad[/QUOTE] It's not 90 or better so it's obviously horrible and enough reason to shutter the studio and fire all the employees.

[QUOTE=redBadger;42777151]They act like a score of 70/100 is bad[/QUOTE] When you're putting down $60 its pretty bad

[QUOTE=catbarf;42777125]This is hardly unique to Call of Duty and Madden. GTA5 had over seven million pre-orders, it could get panned and that would still be a huge chunk of change. Or, heck, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. That game was apparently profitable for Gearbox, and that's almost entirely thanks to preorders. Gamers being over-excited about appearance and franchise continuations are the problem here, not anything unique to one franchise.[/QUOTE] Aliens was profitable since Gearbox didn't use any of their budget and funneled it out. They didn't lose money from it because they didn't spend any money on it.

[QUOTE=redBadger;42777151]They act like a score of 70/100 is bad[/QUOTE] Due to review score inflation, a 7/10 is basically like saying it's so bad it will rape your dog.

Riley will rape your dog.

So does this mean that they'll be putting it in the same categories as FiFA 20xx or NFL 20xx? Those games change very little, are regularly purchased (enough to warrant making more of them) and still charge full price, almost every single year? Is this what CoD has become?

[QUOTE=redBadger;42777151]They act like a score of 70/100 is bad[/QUOTE] For video games, 50/100 already means "This is a bad game" while anything lower usually means "This is also a broken game".

Of course it is, the player-base don't generally read reviews. Nor do their parents. With the exception of maybe IGN the average cod player generally gets his info from the schoolyard, the television adverts, and the posters in gamestop.

[QUOTE=The golden;42777306]No it was profitable because of preorders. That game apparently had a lot of very questionable marketing behind it and on top of that it was also an Aliens game so people were jizzing their pants at the idea and were preordering it by the truckload. Aliens was in the top-sellers list on Steam for quite a while. People were fucking going nuts over that game and they had no idea if it was actually good or not. If they had even a nanometer of patience and [B]waited for even ONE review[/B] then maybe we wouldn't be in this situation. Gamers are gullible as hell and have no balls.[/QUOTE] Reviews were embargo'd until like... the day of release, nobody saw it coming.

[QUOTE=Mabus;42777252]Of course it is, the player-base don't generally read reviews. Nor do their parents. With the exception of maybe IGN the average cod player generally gets his info from the schoolyard, the television adverts, and the posters in gamestop.[/QUOTE] From what I see going around town, going to Gamestop every once in a while Ghosts wasn't really as talked about, because everyone wants to play GTA V.

[QUOTE=Durrsly;42777361]From what I see going around town, going to Gamestop every once in a while Ghosts wasn't really as talked about, because everyone wants to play GTA V.[/QUOTE] This as well, I saw maybe... one person on FB talking about it, and she's a weird one anyway.

[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;42777350]Reviews were embargo'd until like... the day of release, nobody saw it coming.[/QUOTE] I got bad vibes from Colonial Marines when I noticed Sega half-heartedly advertising it. Something about how they were presenting it just seemed off, like they were reluctant to talk about it. Gameplay was very controlled, demos simply didn't exist outside of the E3 fabrication, and the review embargo was just the nail in the coffin.

I just, I really wish the call of duty series was packed away before COD4 there are terrible business and development decisions i see in the video game industry, made for the purpose of attaining the "holy grail" of the COD development and profit formula, that anger me at the same level as the decisions made by the higher-ups in the companies that caused the 2008 US recession-depression

If it did affect the sales I'm pretty sure CoD would've stopped selling so much 2-3 years ago

[QUOTE=The golden;42777306]No it was profitable because of preorders. That game apparently had a lot of very questionable marketing behind it and on top of that it was also an Aliens game so people were jizzing their pants at the idea and were preordering it by the truckload. Aliens was in the top-sellers list on Steam for quite a while. People were fucking going nuts over that game and they had no idea if it was actually good or not. If they had even a nanometer of patience and waited for even ONE review then maybe we wouldn't be in this situation. Gamers are gullible as hell and have no balls.[/QUOTE] Honestly, gamers are the worst consumers ever, it's kinda ridiculous

laugh all you want commies, i get to virtually defend america with my attack dog of liberty.

[QUOTE=be;42777671]Honestly, gamers are the worst consumers ever, it's kinda ridiculous[/QUOTE] You haven't heard of audiophiles and their retarded expenditures have you? Somethings are nice, but not spending over $10,000 dollars just to listen to music that sounds marginally better than a less expensive alternative.

Call of Duty is the Simpsons of gaming at this point.

[QUOTE=Reshy;42777066]This is why I mostly buy indie games, I've enjoyed many of them and seen a lot more potential than a dozen of the COD games.[/QUOTE] Indie games can be awful too the fuck are you on about

[QUOTE=Xion12;42777711]You haven't heard of audiophiles and their retarded expenditures have you? Somethings are nice, but not spending over $10,000 dollars just to listen to music that sounds marginally better than a less expensive alternative.[/QUOTE] audiophiles don't pre-order expensive things without looking at reviews on the chance that they are good. they just buy expensive things that are supposed to be better.

[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;42777749]audiophiles don't pre-order expensive things without looking at reviews on the chance that they are good. they just buy expensive things that are supposed to be better.[/QUOTE] Thats because who the fuck announces a release date and sets up pre-order systems for a bunch of goddamn static shielding cable stilts

[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;42777808]Thats because who the fuck announces a release date and sets up pre-order systems for a bunch of goddamn static shielding cable stilts[/QUOTE] you're completely missing the point. video game "culture" has devolved to basically just gambling on how good a game is in order to get pre-order bonuses. It's stupid. basically forces people to buy it before they even have the slightest hint if it's good or not.

ah... i remember when activision used to be good, with awesome games like star trek armada.

Brand loyalty is as old as products themselves.