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High Moon has a history of licensed Transformers games and a well received Deadpool game.
@Hindle do you think it would be wise to allow them to return to exclusive licensed IP which they show a history with?
Hindle These 3 studios make Call of Duty and 1 a gen from each is absolutely fine which should be the bare minimum once this goes through. Treyarch makes fundamentally different CoD’s from IW for example so you can’t just dump 2 studios cause you think there is a cap for developers on an IP. Call of Duty will be the biggest IP at xbox by a MILE and you wanna gut 66% of the people that make those games. Okay.
Also this argument goes both ways cause Microsoft cant force a studio to work on something they dont want to either.
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Treyarch presents Crackdown 4.
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They’ve done a open-world superhero game before Javy.
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Rather have an exclusive Just Cause than Crackdown.
Also let’s make Spider-Man 2 BC just for the lolz.
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Also techincally Spider-Man 2 (Xbox) being BC would also make it an MCU game.
BONUS
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I have dabbled in a few CoD campaigns, but never played the multiplayer. It’s always just been a “meh” franchise for me. So, I really hope you guys are right that MSFT will reallocate resources and let lots of the Activision devs work on other IP.
However, you are talking about fundamentally changing the business model of CoD, and potentially “losing” a lot of money (in the opportunity cost context, not in the negative profit context).
Assume for a moment that the CoD franchise by itself is worth $20 billion. This is probably not a crazy number given the $70 billion acquisition, but for the sake of this illustration it doesn’t matter much how accurate that is. If CoD starts to release every other year (and nothing else changes) then you have just knocked $10 billion off the value of the franchise. The only way this is not true is if additional microtransactions, dlc, etc can make up for the lost revenue and profit of skipping every other year. If CoD starts to release every fourth year (instead of annually) then you are knocking $15 billion off the value of the franchise.
Of course, there would be cost savings from not developing a PS5 version, not crunching, etc - but in the grand scheme of things those are probably minimal and would not affect the overall numbers much.
Perhaps Phil / Xbox are willing to sacrifice some of CoD’s value because they think plenty of value will be created from other sources. Hypothetically, all those Activision developers who are freed up from CoD will be creating lots of other games which could go on to be great successes.
Ideally, that’s what would happen under the scenario above. BUT, that is a huge roll of the dice. What are the odds that the new games created would even approach the success of CoD? How many succesful new games would the devs have to create to replace the value of one new CoD shipping?
The typical CoD sells over 20 million units. So to replace the value of one annual CoD you need to come up with some combination of games that sells 20 million units (or whatever the Game pass MAU equivalent to that is). So how likely is it that the devs no longer working on CoD can do that? Every year? I would assume not very.
I am not making a prediction here. I’m just trying to point out that taking CoD off its current annual cycle is not the no-brainer some of you seem to think it is. I really hope they find a way to do it and have it make economic sense. It’s going to be very interesting to see how it plays out.
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I still say MS have no interest in licenses.
With XGP, there is no longer any need to rely purely on one IP to drive sales or subs. The idea is to have studios be constantly creating new IP to drive more people in and Treyarch and SH are more then capable of this
Would you rather it be Gears?
And you dont wanna maximize the most popular IP’s to keep people subbed so they can play new IP’S?
Like you want a healthy dose of sequels and new IP’s something that xbox has never done besides Gears, Forza and Halo pretty much.
would probably do a better job than Coalition
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One game per gen seems to be what MS are doing supported throughout. They are not going to pump out constant sequels anymore
I have no doubt that Treyarch and all the other devs can create great games. But that’s not the issue. The issue is can they create games with as much consumer interest as CoD.
Will Treyarch’s potential new IP have the same impact on Game Pass subs, Steam sales, etc as their newest entry in the CoD franchise would have?
Microsoft just paid $70 billion for Activision. Do they really want a bunch of the Activision devs working on unproven IP when they have the most proven IP in the world already in hand?
Again, I hope you are right because I am not really a CoD fan. But it’s going to take some enormous brass balls to make that business decision.
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Well my take is: I think you can make a lot of these franchises into perpetual games simply because you have so many franchises. You no longer need to churn out sequels to stay competitive at retail, you’ll have plenty of new content for gamers to move to if they get bored. This works even better with Game Pass, people get tired of Halo they can go play Doom or COD. It is also easier on the developers. Once the main game ships, I’d imagine they won’t need to “crunch” to release a steady flow of content, it’ll just be regular daily work for them.
It all works together. Pumping out super high quality games annually is just not possible at the level of fidelity we are at. You got to move to a more model where a one game has to stand up for a few years at least. Game Pass and a ton of studios make it possible to not drive your employees into the ground.
Happier developers means better games.
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They have put Halo on a 6 year cycle, and that was a time when they needed regular Halo. MS are a 2tn company, and more acquistions are on the way
Yearly CoD is unsustainable in a $70 market enviroment and detrimental to discovery on a Subscription platform and risks cannibalizing other games and attention.
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