There’s been plenty of talk about a certain FPS title since its arrival, but we will start out in the past for this story. Specifically, we’re talking about Call of Duty Modern Warfare II and not the most recent entry. The reason is that it was revealed that the game’s budget was about $250 million. That’s a high amount and punctuates just how expensive it is to make a AAA title of a certain scale. But the twist is that despite its high budget, the game made a billion dollars in just its first ten days of life. So its budget was only ¼ of its profits!
Another way to look at this is that the game wasn’t just working on a single-player campaign. It had to do LOTS of work to ensure that the multiplayer modes were as fun, detailed, and numerous as possible because THAT is where the gamers go for the bulk of their playtime. Call of Duty Modern Warfare II set all sorts of records when it was released, and it proved that having a game with that budget level is fine, so long as the quality is there to ensure the profits amount to something just as grand.
Another thing to remember is that the game had microtransactions, so even if the initial sales numbers were less than what they got, the microtransactions could’ve easily helped recuperate all the money they spent in the initial game development.
That’s what makes it so ironic that the most recent entry, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, is a far cry from what the previous entry had. The game was made in just 16 months and is the lowest-rated game in the franchise! Not only that, but many of the multiplayer modes aren’t as good as before. The single-player campaign is the shortest in history, and even other game developers are calling it out for certain acts that they did.
While Sledgehammer Games has fired back against rumors and accusations that the game was “rushed” or that they put their team under extreme “crunch” to get the product out, the video game speaks for itself. Its quality isn’t there, and gamers are already flooding back to the previous title, given how stable that one is compared to the new entry.
So, let this be a lesson to all game developers. Take your time, do it right, and spend the proper amount of money, or pay the consequences many times over!