yep, Tony said the same thing bit for bit, and Vicarious Visions didn't went to Call of Duty, they became a Blizzard division and worked in Diablo 4 - the article mistakenly also says that the studio was absorbed into Activision in 2022 which isn't true
They did assist on Infinite Warfare, Black Ops Cold War and Warzone before being moved from being a subsidiary of Activision to a subsidiary of Blizzard in January 2021 since they were working on Diablo II: Resurrected. They did this so they could continue to provide support to II after it came out and help work on Diablo IV. They were fully merged in April 2022, seven months after Diablo II: Resurrected came out.
It is a shame because with the THPS 1+2 Remake it seemed like the series finally had something positive going for the first time since arguably Project 8 back in 2006. A 3+4 Remake would have been cool, but I personally would have loved an Underground Remake. Heck, I would have even liked to see how they would have done on something new like a THPS 6 even.
But it didn't sell well enough to warrant further games. For Activision at least. It sold 10 million copies but Activision is like go work on COD instead.
> It sold 10 million copies but Activision is like go work on COD instead.
Tony Hawk 1+2 sold 10 MILLION...and it's still not good enough for Activision? A remake?!
Right dude it was perfect, amazing. The graphics, customization, everything was superb. Legit my only issue was that online was glitched for a long time so nobody played it.
We live in a time this should already happened and we would hear about thug1+2 remake coming this fall.
I'm so sad about this, now ea skate. Is also becoming a f2p multiplayer Shite I am thinking on getting an Xbox just for skate 1&3 from back in the day.
Session and skater xl were... Well they were a game for a little while but lacked any passion or soul thps and skate. Had.
I miss the old days
I just got into Session and I think the passion and soul are there, just not the resources. Love the capacity for expression and all the gameplay customization, it could just use more polish
Yeah second that. Session takes some time to get used to but once you do, it's such a fun fulfilling game. I still find myself going on for 10 mins to an hour at times just messing around. There are some mod maps too people make that add a bit more to the game. It's really a fun skateboard sandbox. I also feel it feels more like actual skateboarding. Doing tricks and landing them shouldn't be some 100,000 point combo thing. Skate series I think had it good but a bit more arcadey. Not bad for those but Sessions just felt more real to me. I love your left analog controls your left foot and right was your right foot. I think Skate your right analog always controlled both your feet unless there was a harder difficulty I never tried.
Nope, the 360 marketplace is what is closing. You can still buy 360 and original Xbox games on the Xbox One and Series X/S still fortunately after that period of time.
Ah mate I am so fucking stupid I sold my Xbox series x in favor of getting a ps5. I already have the skate games on there. It's brilliant. my mates convinced me to get a ps5 for the exclusives and more People playing, in reality, I deeply regret switching over because when I see gamepass and some really franchises I never played before (always have been a ps fan) I miss I won't experience them. I'm hoping for a summer refresh of the series x and leave my ps5 dusting around.
Though Stellar blade is a top tier experience I don't regret š
The online was just much worse in general than even the old PS2 games. Honestly, they should've just copy-pasted the design from those games for online play, it was basically perfect. Everything else except the online (and the park editor was kinda worse too I guess) was perfect, though.
You couldnāt add gaps? Never tried create a park but I swear you could have in the ps2 games. Or maybe Iām thinking of Skate 3, played that recently
They could have just released the third game as a dlc and I would have been totally fine. The remake already had the revert in there. I loved the levels in the third game and it would be great to play them again.
THPS 4 was one of my favourite games as a teenager. It had a great balance of freedom, the arcade feel of 1, 2 & 3 and nonsense fun missions.Ā
I liked THUG 2 (I had the PSP port) but felt it went too far into being an episode of Viva La Bam.Ā
A 3+4 remake would have been a no-brainer purchase for me.Ā
Agreed, yeah.
3 and 4 are the pinnacle of the series, IMO. I know that the THUG games have their fans, but I feel like THUG1 was already kind of the "beginning of the end" for the series, throwing darts at random new ideas to see what works.
3 introducing the revert and 4 introducing larger levels (plus spine transfers) was peak gameplay design, and most new additions that came in later games (natas spins, "caveman", freak outs, bert slides, etc.) never felt like natural extensions of the existing combo lines, they were awkward and broke rhythm.
If they made THPS3+4 a thing, I'd absolutely be buying it full price, day one, no hesitation.
Yeah the third was my shit back then. Part of what got me to want to learn how to skate as a kid. I end up playing Sessions which got me to buy the THPS 1+2 remake and replaying 3 and 4 on PS2. A friend had told me he got back to skateboarding and I said I would think about it again during the summer last year. Summer hits and I remember what I said and end up getting my first actual proper board. These games were a huge influence.
If they remake 3, it will be so fun playing in the airport map again.
And how well did the remake sell? I legitimately don't know.
That's the only metric that actually matters.
If it was only beloved by a niche crowd on Reddit....of course they didn't continue with it.
DS Remake was also fantastic...and it sold poorly.
>And how well did the remake sell? I legitimately don't know.
One quick search shows:
>[*Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 has become the fastest-selling game in the franchise, selling 1 million copies in the first two weeks*. In the United Kingdom, the game was the biggest launch for the franchise since 2003's Tony Hawk's Underground and was the second biggest launch in the franchise overall.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hawk's_Pro_Skater_1_%2B_2)
āFastest selling in the franchise in the first two weeksā doesnāt necessarily mean much. If it sold 10 million copies, thatās one thing, but āselling slightly better than the last game we made a long time agoā might have just not been good enough. If Activision thinks itās a better investment for VV to speed up COD development by 30% instead of get them to make a game that only sells 3 million copies, then I can see the logic even if I disagree
I genuinely think it likely did really well and made a solid profit... but the lack of MTX and giga scale of CoD/Warzone/Blizzard IPs did the sequel in.
Cause I can't help but think of that PirateSoftware YT short where he revealed that one WoW microtransaction outgrossed all of Starcraft 2. You probably have to have a GIGA profit hit at ABK to justify continuing to work on a series around a pop culture figure to corporate when you can make more for cheaper by getting another to collab as an overpriced skin bundle on your mega game. š«
Reminds me of Starfield (10 million players) being the 'biggest launch by Bethesda ever' despite the fact Fallout 4 shipped 12 million on the first day and had 18 million shipped by end of the month so very likely all those 12 million copies sold unless retailers love having fallout 4 boxes clutter the place. Activision Blizzard is very similar to the xbox division when it comes to solid numbers, they'll use engagement/popular or other vague terms to cloud where it is.
Not to mention the first 2 games were made by a team of like 20 people in two and a half years. The 1+2 Remake probably had a staff of 200 and potentially even longer development time. Games do be expensive nowadays.
One issue is it was an Epic Store EXCLUSIVE for 2 years! (Likely due to Activision cutting up Vicarious, as Galaxy did the Steam port).
And a shame as it a perfect opportunity to advertise this as the perfect Steam Deck travel game too
Wild that they released the best kart racing game of all time and now itās barely playable because races take nearly a minute to load and unlocking characters and cosmetics now all the Grand Prix events are long gone is an endless grind.
It's crazy how Activision legitimately develops only one game. And it's one game with very little innovation or effort put in. The last Activision game I played was Crash 4 and they rewarded the devs who actually made a quality game by forcing them to also develop the one lifeless game the entire company is focused on.
It's not just safe for the sake of being sake. They get money because they make moeny, so they need to keep the churn going to produce more and more. CoD is the only Activision franchise that produces that much, that consistently. So they have to keep cannibalizing everything else of value or potential to keep that wheel turning.
Stark reminder for everyone to support other games, especially smaller devs, that are breaking the mold.
Is that not the definition of 'safe'? Choosing the consistent money-printing behemoth instead of allowing talent to continue to innovate in ways that may or may not bring home big money?
Same thing with Ubisoft. They shoehorn in the standard Ubi-open-world formula because it's a known quantity. Presumably much of Starfield's woes are due to them sticking in with the standard Bethesda open world experience instead of making something that diverges far more into its own thing in a way that might not align with player expectation, even if that might have made for a more compelling experience.
I disagree about Ubi. Maybe this is true with their mainline games like Far Cry and Assassinās Creed, but they are the only major dev still experimenting. STEEP and Riders Republic, Prince of Persia Lost Crown, Anno, Settlers, Trials, Mario + Rabbids, Trackmania, The Crew, Scott Pilgrim, Roller Champions, Rayman, Starlink, etc.
Most of those were within the last 4-5 years! Compare that to EA or Activisionās output on non mainline releases.
If you strip out sequels, you've maybe one or two games in there from the past five years tops. But I was talking more at their larger budget releases. Their indie-level output has always been good, but anything with a large budget? Very Ubisofted. The Crew absolutely has those elements, as far as they can fit them into a racing game.
It makes sense though as thatās what sells. Theyāve pushed forward on those Ubi elements because it works.
Horizon Zero Dawn is basically an open world Ubi-element Dino game. Witcher 3 is an open world Ubi-element game. BoTW and TotK have a lot of open world open world Ubi-elements when you break it down.
The biggest games continually have open world elements that Ubisoft essentially created, because they work so well. The difference between Ubisoft and these other companies though is that Ubisoft doesnāt neglect their lower-budget releases and will try something out even if it wonāt sell millions of units.
I think a big part of this is the guy who founded Ubi is still there and he lets the teams do their thing. Even though he wasnāt implicated in the recent workplace sexual harassment issues, it seems like he is actually passionate about games and has been in games-related businesses since the ā80s. Iād love to listen an interview and hear it from himself tho.
You are right, it is, but I thought it's worth drawing the difference between "ha, easy money" and "I have no choice but to chase the known moneymaker"
I would only disagree with Starfield: you can tell by some of the features in the game that they wanted a much broader experience and just weren't able to go through it and lowered their own scope to be able to deliver.
Some is scope, but stuff like the fuel system quite openly having changed from a resource management element to something fairly prefunctory seems like an obvious collision between a more space-sim direction and the standard 'go anywhere, just have fun, you can play all our content in a single playthrough' style that wouldn't jive with the idea of getting genuinely standard or having less casual elements.
I've never played a Bethesda game past at least Oblivion that didn't feel like it had obvious powerful compromises (generally in the writing), but Starfield felt particularly hamstrung by a combination of their engine and their formula in a way that I don't think is entirely seperate. Like their physics system and amount of NPC schedule stuff probably makes true open world (i.e. space to planet, or outdoor to interior) streaming problematic.
If they didn't have to deliver 'space oblivion' I don't think that'd be the same issue. They have systems for NPC schedules, but due to the problem of travel time and timezones they can't *really* have people eat and sleep anymore. They've got this indepth physics simulation on all the objects but the player barely has any way to interact with it beyond gunfire (you can actually pick up and play with character's hair, though its nigh impossible to do that without accidentally talking to them). They've got the bones of an open-world exploration game, but the world is divided into randomly generated chunks seperated by inappropriately large distances. They've got base building, but travelling to one is difficult and there's functionally no point in doing so, there's a stealth system but good luck ever going through even one fight entirely unseen unless you sink an inordinate amount of time into it. Just element after element in the game because Morrowind/Oblivion/FO3/FO4 had it, even if it doesn't serve the game it is applied to.
If they'd been 'risky' and just abandoned that Elder Scrolls/Fallout bones and made something that played entirely different, I think you'd have a more cohesive experience. Though I don't know that players wouldn't have just gone "Wait, this isn't just Fallout with space travel!".
When that basket is one of the biggest gaming franchises around, are you surprised?
They could make a new CoD that sells worse than any other CoD game so far and it'd still make many millions more than the best selling Tony Hawk game.
They also intentionally don't change, because why rock the boat? If you've found a formula that sells this well, it's risky to try change it.
Except it's a giga-basket that's more efficient than using multiple small ones (despite the vocal minority wanting otherwise), and you also own 2 other farms that are just as profitable for diversification.
I don't know about innovation, but the effort put into CoD is far greater than something like FIFA. There's a reason they need 3 separate developers. The games are highly polished, with small but incredibly detailed linear campaigns (recent CoD issues notwithstanding), and a suite of multiplayer maps to go with each one. They often tinker with game mechanics and make changes regularly. They aren't innovative, but they aren't lazy.
And especially with AAA development times growing longer and longer, it's legitimately impressive that they've managed to create a new CoD every year. I'm not saying they shouldn't innovate in these games, just that they're far from lazy.
It's not like it's wrong to call it effort, but it's really just an absurd amount of resources. A lot of the releases are definitely lazy in certain areas. Generally in stuff like actually designing the games (maps in particular, weapon balance recently), BO4 didn't even have a campaign because Fortnite didn't have one, the recent MW campaign was infamous of course.
So yeah saying a lot of effort went into it is definitely not wrong, but if we were to say something like labor of love it would just be funny. I rarely get the sense people want to work on these games.
If you think the developers who make Call of Duty donāt want to work on one of the most popular games of all time your crazy. Working on Call of Duty is a dream job for many developers.
Believe it or not, there are people who just thrive in high pressure environments, and there are absolutely guys happily banging out 60 hour weeks in game development just because it's what they love doing.
When I was young and unmarried I definitely had a job I'd have very willingly spent 12 hours a day at...if my bosses weren't forcing me to go home and get some sleep. It was unique, thrilling, and challenging. It was, frankly, *fun*, and there just wasn't much in the world outside that matched it.
Definitely a bachelor's game, though.
Minus the recent MW23. That game fucking sucks as far as performance and glitches/bugs are concerned.
I donāt know how they managed to make a glorified DLC ten times as buggy as the original game last year.
It doesnāt have innovation because itās CoD. Theyāre not doing anything new, theyāre not making different games, they specifically donāt want to because CoD sells and Itās easy to be lazy
But they are lazy, there is no passion or vision to anything they do and there are way too many people working on it for the lacklustre end result.
They have become less and less polished with each iteration recently. MWIIās multiplayer was a disaster at launch and was riddled with technical issues.
I really donāt get the fascination with Call Of Duty, it is quite literally the same game every year. I was bored with the series by the time Black Ops came out.
Itās super chill and easy to get into thatās why. Itās the same type of game every year, you know youāre gonna enjoy it so why not buy it and play if you want. I agree youāll get burnt out, my run was MW2-BO2, but they really arenāt bad games.
That's a lot of it's appeal, you know what you are going to get and it's market tested. It's like Mcdonald or Starbucks, is it the greatest burger or coffee in the world? No but you know what you are always going to get from McDonald's or Starbucks.
I think it's a combination of the "progression" system (which has had such a negative impact on gaming in my opinion as it conditions players to "need" some sort of grind) and the fact that even if you suck at Call of Duty you can still have fun, it's super easy to kill people, etc.
Now granted I'm biased, I play a ton of Halo, and I have some young CoD players in my family and they hate Halo because you can easily get destroyed by more skilled players and not be able to do anything about it. So they gravitate to the "easier" game
Yeah remember when we played games for fun gameplay and that was it, not progression system to keep us coming back but rather just good fun times. Anyways im going outside to yell at the sky
>they hate Halo because you can easily get destroyed by more skilled players and not be able to do anything about it.
Is that not also the case in Call of Duty?
>the "progression" system (which has had such a negative impact on gaming in my opinion as it conditions players to "need" some sort of grind)
That's a pretty solid point. Like every game now has some sort of meta system where you'll fill a meter over time as you play.
It's comfort gaming. Very little changes, and that's what people are looking for most of the time. Simple progression, quick matches with virtually no stakes.
I do get the appeal, but it's also not exactly a life changing experience.
Well why fixing what isnt broken, like EA butchered Battlefield franchise, it isnt even funny. Sometimes when you get right formula you dont need innovate much , you just need quality of life improvement and good amount of good content over time
Like i like Age of Empires 2 remaster and how thy released some nice content DLCs with new campaigns (age 4 isn't bad but is so innovative that is not fun to play for me... )
Sometimes I just like a fun fast paced multiplayer shooter that's not a battle royale, and it's one of the better options out there. I'd rather have Titanfall 3 or tribes though
CoD is a sport title, no different than Counter Strike.
$60 for something you play all the time, every year, isn't a bad deal.
In the age where it's out the wazoo with DLC it's a little less palatable but it's not like this formula doesn't make sense.
Counter Strike has had 3 main games in 25 years with a heavy focus on competition. So much so that it's hard to enjoy it if you just want to play casually.
I'd say COD is very different than Counter Strike.
To people who play it it's mostly a friend's thing. COD even with try hards is still very accessible and a pick up and play type online game, it's market tested and it's become a friends type thing for 15 year now. Your average Joe just wants to come home from work and play a few game with their boys the same way people do with 2k and GTA online. That's the appeal of cod in a nutshell.
How many often do you read "i just want to see the same game" when studios are talking about remakes or new releases? Well, it's the same thing with COD. People that play COD live tat it is already and don't want it to be changed.
not a cod fan or anything, but it's just a habit to people and a known value. the fans know exactly what to expect with cod so it's always a safe buy compared to some unknown shooter or something.
so basically, just a comfort food in video game terms.
And yet that one game makes them so much fucking money I can't really fault them for not giving a shit. How many of us wish we could coast on life like that?
I sure as shit don't get the appeal to it at all, though.
Money talks. If THPS made as much money as COD, they would have been making THPS 15 by now, but that's just not the case. They don't work on COD as their bread and butter game because they like COD. It's the game that is loved by millions and makes them millions.
It is lifeless, but it sells a lot. Can't really blame Activision, the consumers are 100% to blame, they are sustaining CoD since forever, this is not a "free to play" trend or anything, they pay full price yearly to keep up playing the multiplayer, it's a bizarre example of addiction in this industry
Yeah, as much as the Reddit Gamers TM get up in arms about stuff like this, it's probably a safe bet that they wouldn't even buy or play something like Tony Hawk 3/4
Yeah, I've been hearing about how "CoD is dead fr this time guys I swear" in gaming communities since like 2013. But it doesn't just sell well, it sells *so dominantly well* that the ONLY year it isn't the #1 best seller is when Rockstar releases a game. And not for like 2-3 years, we're coming up on nearly *two decades* of CoD dominance. CoD is going to be the #1 best selling game for longer than the time between the NES and GameCube
Not only that but when lists of top ten games sold in a month are released you'll often see two or even 3 CoD games on there (generally this years game, last years game and sometimes Black Ops 3)
The people that made these decisions got paid 70 billion dollars by Microsoft.
Sounds like it worked out ok for them. Who cares about the long term consequences.
Iām gonna break this down to all those reading so itās easy. I have no idea who Iām arguing with, but itās weird they all seem to say the same thing.
Call of duty has no growth. How do you grow from it? Where do you grow into? Call of duty breakfast cereal? Call of duty the movie? Call of duty the handgun?
Activision investing highly skilled resources heavily into call of duty means they want to maintain the status quo and not grow. They donāt want to invest in other properties that can actually grow. Like tony hawk. Itās a shame.
If I was an activision investor Iād be pissed. But then again thereās a solid reason Iām not an activation investor.
Nintendo thoughā¦ they know what theyāre doing. They are actually trying. And itās paying out well.
I hate this so much but it makes business sense to put all your resources into releasing your biggest IP ahead of schedule. I hope 3+4 isnāt completely off the table.
I donāt think thatās happening anymore, remaking 3 is one thing but 4? Thatās a completely different game to the previous ones in terms of content amount. It would take them at least twice the time it took them to make THPS1+2.
It was leaked when the original story leaked a year ago that THPS3 was basically done, probably since they just had to import the levels into the old engine.
But yeah 4 would be tricky to implement, donāt know how you would do that without doing some heavy engine modifications.
>But yeah 4 would be tricky to implement, donāt know how you would do that without doing some heavy engine modifications.
THPS1+2 already has all mechanics 4 added, plus I dont think the larger maps are that big deal. Only thing they'd have to add besides the maps are the NPC's that gives you the missions/goals, since 4 has most goals/missions out of all the games and all the voice acting that comes with it.
Yeah thatās what would probably take so long with 4, itās basically a semi open world game compared to the others. I do think they would redo the voice acting but that wouldnāt be long
Call of Duty has cannibalized so much of Activision's development capability over the years, it's honestly insane. Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, Treyarch, Raven, Neversoft, High Moon, Beenox, Toys For Bob, the list goes on and on and on. None of these studios develop anything else anymore, and some have been shuttered completely. Such a waste of talent.
Kinda sucks how I played the remake and I felt that jolt of nostalgia for about 1, 2 hours or so... then it's gone. I'm not one of those people who are obsessed with nostalgia (tried to replay Shogun 2, felt nothing, etc..). Saying that, it looks like this remake did not sold good numbers (unlike Crash and Spyro), maybe the headache with music licensing, the likeness of the skaters, etc.. all that crap proved to be too much of a hassle for such a small financial return. A real shame, these are iconic games from the PS1 generation
Fuck this. THPS4 was my favourite and after 1+2 I waited for 3+4, but they sent good developers to CoD mines. Why you even need so many people to make another yearly reskin of CoD?
Frankly call of duty really just eat everything at Activision it's kinda insane to be honest.
I am hoping now that they're owned by Microsoft that maybe stopping since more games means more for gamepass! Because they really do have a good number of IPs that can easily come back or be remastered.
I think their last game was Singularity and while it didn't sell well I really liked it, so it's good that they're doing something other then supporting COD.
It's just a shame people complain about activision making nothing but the usual games but when they make something different it ends up selling poorly. Hell look at the prince of persia game from ubisoft that came out this year. There's a reason activision does nothing but make CoD all the time.
Did Prince of Persia actually not make money relative to its production cost, or are they unhappy because a low budget smaller title didn't net them a hundred million dollars?
I don't think it's unreasonable to call 300,000 copies a flop. IDK what the budget is but that's nothing to write home about and likely to be considered a failure.
Yep. Games are too expensive to make. When they have an option of making another release for the franchise that you know will sell versus a remake or God forbid a new IP, the choice is obvious.
the console players who wanted to play it played it through subscription so it didn't count as sales
gee, i wonder why it didn't sell
if it wanted players, shouldve put it on Game Pass. if it wanted sales units, shouldve put it on Steam. the videogame market is not that difficult to figure out. Ubi cared more about pushing their trash subscription service and Epic games money than about having people enjoy the game.
Games have done poorly despite being on Steam, while others have done well without the need to be on the platform (which includes THPS 1+2, which was EGS exclusive for over a year).
Not saying the game wouldn't do better with a Steam release, but there is no indication that would have been the deciding factor between a success and a failure.
Fuck ubisoft for actually trying to make a profit instead of handing money over to Valve for doing nothing amirite? [It's on PC and has gone on sale already.](https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/prince-of-persia/the-lost-crown) Just say you're not interested and move on with your day.
im not installing 40 launchers on my steam deck. oh and it doesnt run on steam deck without jumping through a fuckton of hoops. at that point i might as well just pirate it. only reason i pay for games is if they make it easier for me to play them and offer achievements and cloud saves and updates, or simple multiplayer.
Yeah why play that when the story has been dead for 10+ years and you can play dead cells if you want to try something actually ādifferentā and are into sidescrollers
For the record this is all based on a Did You Know Gaming video that was released on YouTube yesterday.
That's not even the most infuriating part.
The first part of the video shows that Vicarious Visions(VV) had a close relationship with Nintendo and was working on a Donkey Kong 3D pitch. Miyamoto might have been involved too and suggested a feature to the team.
Activision canceled the project and forced VV to become a Destiny 2 and COD support studio.
A 3D DK was terminated because of c level execs.
Vicarious Visions was folded into Blizzard, to work on Diablo, not CoD/Destiny2, and Destiny 2 hadn't even been part of Activision for 2 years when it happened.
Everything you say is covered in the video later on, what OP said was correct. Vicarious Visions weren't allowed to move forward with the DK project or a new Skylanders, in order that they could work on Destiny 2 and COD.
It was only later on that VV were folded into Blizzard, after Blizzard were impressed with VV's in-progress work on Diablo 2: Resurrected.
Its still wild how Activision has 3 studios working on different versions of CoD, and at one point they almost had 5 studios working on 5 different versions of CoD annually (I cant remember one of them, but at one point they tried to contract Gearbox to make CoD games too). They have all these other IPs and all these other resources and yet cannot (or refuse to) produce mostly anything else. But...money talks...and as long as people keep buying them in the millions and whaling for skins, itll keep happening.
No I think they still have 5 studios working exclusively on cod. Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Bee Knox, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer. Toys for Bob used to be included but they managed to escape the cod mines after the Microsoft buyout by going indie. Thereās probably another studio or 2 that Iām forgetting but I think that covers them.
Wow. So they did eventually make it up to 5 since that happened. That's wild, but it makes sense. Especially with Warfare and no telling how many they have as support studios. Makes sense but it's even crazier that they can't spare anything for a different IP.
**Infinity Ward**, **Treyarch Studios** and **Sledgehammer Games** are the primary development studios
**Raven Software** and **Beenox** then do most of the heavy lifting for Call of Duty: Warzone, while also chipping in on the mainline games and mobile spin-offs
**High Moon Studios** serves as an ad-hoc support studio. **Vicarious Visions** (*now known as Blizzard Albany*) did/do the same
**Demonware** specialises in networking/matchmaking across all of Activision's titles
**Activision Shanghai**, **Solid State Studios** and **Digital Legends** all work on Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile
**Team Ricochet** is a smaller team dedicated to implementing and updating Call of Duty's anti-cheat measures
**Toys for Bob** and **Radical Entertainment** both served as ad-hoc CoD support devs too. The former has spun off from the company, and the latter is essentially a ghost studio that's been slowly gutted over the years. I believe there was only 6 employees at Radical by the time Xbox acquired Activision
> Its still wild how Activision has 3 studios working on different versions of CoD, and at one point they almost had 5 studios working on 5 different versions of CoD annually
Looking at the startup screen, I counted 10 different companies, (although Toys for Bob went indie, so it's 9 as of now).
Yeah, I had to Google it myself too because its crazy. Especially since the other person said they have 5 studios working on CoD. Makes sense, but thats just wild. Now its 9?! Apparently its still just 3 main development studios, but they have all those other studios that still help a LOT with the development and get credit for it. But thats a whole lot of resources to dedicate to these games...9 studios?
That's just inductive of modern day gaming. Multi-player + Warzone, and while zombies doesn't seem to get much work done as of now, there's at least a skeleton crew still making sure things move smoothly. Then you also have the constant stream of new content and also Warzone mobile being released recently, and a big feature of that game is cross progression with the console/PC game.
AAA Multi-player games require a lot more man power these days if you want to keep up.
People keep saying this, but look at every other AAA studio, it takes most of them 7+ years to release a game at all these days.
Makes some sense to me that releasing a CoD every single year and having it be the best selling game most years is an insane task that would take a ton of work.
The gaming industry needs to move away from the big publishers. Every work of passion is either sidelined or just completely forgotten about in the name of profit
Not sure I buy this claim because "3+4" doesn't make sense to me. 3 plays like 1 and 2, but 4 marked a departure from the formula where the player could just freely explore the levels and talk to NPCs for missions and challenges. It would have made more sense to remake 3's content as DLC for 1+2 or something.
I mean as much as it sucks that it happened it makes logical sense. You only have to look at the profits from each franchise to see why they made such an obvious choice.
This was 100% the correct business decision. I imagine creating a little jangling fob on the end of a gun takes about an hour or two of work. So like what? Realistically? 50 bucks.Ā
It makes triple that the first ten seconds it's on a store. Gets rotated in and out of stores across different games.Ā
Vs Tony Hawk remasters. Which are niche millennial nostalgia games. Of which they already served once. Who all will double dip?
Right business decision.Ā
Still terrible.Ā
Claimed? Tony Hawk himself stated this. It's as factual as it comes.
yep, Tony said the same thing bit for bit, and Vicarious Visions didn't went to Call of Duty, they became a Blizzard division and worked in Diablo 4 - the article mistakenly also says that the studio was absorbed into Activision in 2022 which isn't true
They did assist on Infinite Warfare, Black Ops Cold War and Warzone before being moved from being a subsidiary of Activision to a subsidiary of Blizzard in January 2021 since they were working on Diablo II: Resurrected. They did this so they could continue to provide support to II after it came out and help work on Diablo IV. They were fully merged in April 2022, seven months after Diablo II: Resurrected came out. It is a shame because with the THPS 1+2 Remake it seemed like the series finally had something positive going for the first time since arguably Project 8 back in 2006. A 3+4 Remake would have been cool, but I personally would have loved an Underground Remake. Heck, I would have even liked to see how they would have done on something new like a THPS 6 even.
It was confusing to me because I thought the game had sold well. Clearly there was interest in at least getting 3 4 thug and thug 2 in.
I bet it would have sold better if it wasn't an Epic exclusive for as long as it was.
Oh yeah, that's why I forgot it existed.
But it didn't sell well enough to warrant further games. For Activision at least. It sold 10 million copies but Activision is like go work on COD instead.
> It sold 10 million copies but Activision is like go work on COD instead. Tony Hawk 1+2 sold 10 MILLION...and it's still not good enough for Activision? A remake?!
micro transactions for COD take even less effort to make than a remake and bring in billions
I didn't bought it because stupid EPIC exclusivity and always online bs (yea fuck Steamdeck exclusivity)
Videogameschronicle has the absolute worst headlines.
To be fair, they may not have realized it was Tony Hawk. Happens to him all the time.
Ha. "It's claimed, by this guy who looks suspiciously like extreme sports legend... Shaun White"
I will forever be mad about this until they do it. The 1+2 remake was so fucking perfect in every single way. The third game was my favorite too.
Right dude it was perfect, amazing. The graphics, customization, everything was superb. Legit my only issue was that online was glitched for a long time so nobody played it.
We live in a time this should already happened and we would hear about thug1+2 remake coming this fall. I'm so sad about this, now ea skate. Is also becoming a f2p multiplayer Shite I am thinking on getting an Xbox just for skate 1&3 from back in the day. Session and skater xl were... Well they were a game for a little while but lacked any passion or soul thps and skate. Had. I miss the old days
I just got into Session and I think the passion and soul are there, just not the resources. Love the capacity for expression and all the gameplay customization, it could just use more polish
Yeah second that. Session takes some time to get used to but once you do, it's such a fun fulfilling game. I still find myself going on for 10 mins to an hour at times just messing around. There are some mod maps too people make that add a bit more to the game. It's really a fun skateboard sandbox. I also feel it feels more like actual skateboarding. Doing tricks and landing them shouldn't be some 100,000 point combo thing. Skate series I think had it good but a bit more arcadey. Not bad for those but Sessions just felt more real to me. I love your left analog controls your left foot and right was your right foot. I think Skate your right analog always controlled both your feet unless there was a harder difficulty I never tried.
I bought a steam deck and emulate all the old THPS on the go now.
Hurry, Xbox 360 purchases for backwards compatibility won't be possible after July.
Nope, the 360 marketplace is what is closing. You can still buy 360 and original Xbox games on the Xbox One and Series X/S still fortunately after that period of time.
Ah mate I am so fucking stupid I sold my Xbox series x in favor of getting a ps5. I already have the skate games on there. It's brilliant. my mates convinced me to get a ps5 for the exclusives and more People playing, in reality, I deeply regret switching over because when I see gamepass and some really franchises I never played before (always have been a ps fan) I miss I won't experience them. I'm hoping for a summer refresh of the series x and leave my ps5 dusting around. Though Stellar blade is a top tier experience I don't regret š
The online was just much worse in general than even the old PS2 games. Honestly, they should've just copy-pasted the design from those games for online play, it was basically perfect. Everything else except the online (and the park editor was kinda worse too I guess) was perfect, though.
No gaps in created parks killed the entire creation mode to me.Ā
You couldnāt add gaps? Never tried create a park but I swear you could have in the ps2 games. Or maybe Iām thinking of Skate 3, played that recently
You can add gaps in the ps2 games.
They could have just released the third game as a dlc and I would have been totally fine. The remake already had the revert in there. I loved the levels in the third game and it would be great to play them again.
THPS3 is still my favourite game to this day. I will always be mad about not getting it in the 1+2 Engine.
I'm genuinely still waiting for that Underground remake. I wanna beat Eric Sparrow's ass.
Don't we all.
THPS 4 was one of my favourite games as a teenager. It had a great balance of freedom, the arcade feel of 1, 2 & 3 and nonsense fun missions.Ā I liked THUG 2 (I had the PSP port) but felt it went too far into being an episode of Viva La Bam.Ā A 3+4 remake would have been a no-brainer purchase for me.Ā
Third was my intro to the series so it has a special place in my heart
Agreed, yeah. 3 and 4 are the pinnacle of the series, IMO. I know that the THUG games have their fans, but I feel like THUG1 was already kind of the "beginning of the end" for the series, throwing darts at random new ideas to see what works. 3 introducing the revert and 4 introducing larger levels (plus spine transfers) was peak gameplay design, and most new additions that came in later games (natas spins, "caveman", freak outs, bert slides, etc.) never felt like natural extensions of the existing combo lines, they were awkward and broke rhythm. If they made THPS3+4 a thing, I'd absolutely be buying it full price, day one, no hesitation.
The 1+2 remake was one of the last games I ever remember pre ordering tbhĀ
Yeah the third was my shit back then. Part of what got me to want to learn how to skate as a kid. I end up playing Sessions which got me to buy the THPS 1+2 remake and replaying 3 and 4 on PS2. A friend had told me he got back to skateboarding and I said I would think about it again during the summer last year. Summer hits and I remember what I said and end up getting my first actual proper board. These games were a huge influence. If they remake 3, it will be so fun playing in the airport map again.
And how well did the remake sell? I legitimately don't know. That's the only metric that actually matters. If it was only beloved by a niche crowd on Reddit....of course they didn't continue with it. DS Remake was also fantastic...and it sold poorly.
>And how well did the remake sell? I legitimately don't know. One quick search shows: >[*Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 has become the fastest-selling game in the franchise, selling 1 million copies in the first two weeks*. In the United Kingdom, the game was the biggest launch for the franchise since 2003's Tony Hawk's Underground and was the second biggest launch in the franchise overall.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hawk's_Pro_Skater_1_%2B_2)
āFastest selling in the franchise in the first two weeksā doesnāt necessarily mean much. If it sold 10 million copies, thatās one thing, but āselling slightly better than the last game we made a long time agoā might have just not been good enough. If Activision thinks itās a better investment for VV to speed up COD development by 30% instead of get them to make a game that only sells 3 million copies, then I can see the logic even if I disagree
I genuinely think it likely did really well and made a solid profit... but the lack of MTX and giga scale of CoD/Warzone/Blizzard IPs did the sequel in. Cause I can't help but think of that PirateSoftware YT short where he revealed that one WoW microtransaction outgrossed all of Starcraft 2. You probably have to have a GIGA profit hit at ABK to justify continuing to work on a series around a pop culture figure to corporate when you can make more for cheaper by getting another to collab as an overpriced skin bundle on your mega game. š«
Reminds me of Starfield (10 million players) being the 'biggest launch by Bethesda ever' despite the fact Fallout 4 shipped 12 million on the first day and had 18 million shipped by end of the month so very likely all those 12 million copies sold unless retailers love having fallout 4 boxes clutter the place. Activision Blizzard is very similar to the xbox division when it comes to solid numbers, they'll use engagement/popular or other vague terms to cloud where it is.
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Not to mention the first 2 games were made by a team of like 20 people in two and a half years. The 1+2 Remake probably had a staff of 200 and potentially even longer development time. Games do be expensive nowadays.
Music licensing has gotten extremely expensive since the originals came out as well.
It sold tons but nothing will beat cod and diablo.
One issue is it was an Epic Store EXCLUSIVE for 2 years! (Likely due to Activision cutting up Vicarious, as Galaxy did the Steam port). And a shame as it a perfect opportunity to advertise this as the perfect Steam Deck travel game too
Would have been day one buy for me if it wasn't in Epic. Got it cheap on Steam later tho.
Bro move of them to discount the game on Steams launch too
not really the only metric that matters. Sometimes good games don't sell well. Maybe if you are only looking at profits
The fourth is my fave followed by the third, so Iām hella pissed!
Same! So many great maps in 3.
Same as the continuation of free DLC in crash racing :( We never got our season passes with rest of Spyro characters
Dude if ctr had a next gen patch with 60fps I'd play it non stop. It's just a half arsed experience rn
I'd just settle for a PC release at this point
Wow thats crazy this isnāt on PC. I just kinda always assumed it was because of the other Crash games I see on sale all the time.
You can play it in 60 FPS+4k via ryujinx
Wild that they released the best kart racing game of all time and now itās barely playable because races take nearly a minute to load and unlocking characters and cosmetics now all the Grand Prix events are long gone is an endless grind.
It's crazy how Activision legitimately develops only one game. And it's one game with very little innovation or effort put in. The last Activision game I played was Crash 4 and they rewarded the devs who actually made a quality game by forcing them to also develop the one lifeless game the entire company is focused on.
Everyone always knows its safest to have all your eggs in one basket.
It's not just safe for the sake of being sake. They get money because they make moeny, so they need to keep the churn going to produce more and more. CoD is the only Activision franchise that produces that much, that consistently. So they have to keep cannibalizing everything else of value or potential to keep that wheel turning. Stark reminder for everyone to support other games, especially smaller devs, that are breaking the mold.
Is that not the definition of 'safe'? Choosing the consistent money-printing behemoth instead of allowing talent to continue to innovate in ways that may or may not bring home big money? Same thing with Ubisoft. They shoehorn in the standard Ubi-open-world formula because it's a known quantity. Presumably much of Starfield's woes are due to them sticking in with the standard Bethesda open world experience instead of making something that diverges far more into its own thing in a way that might not align with player expectation, even if that might have made for a more compelling experience.
I disagree about Ubi. Maybe this is true with their mainline games like Far Cry and Assassinās Creed, but they are the only major dev still experimenting. STEEP and Riders Republic, Prince of Persia Lost Crown, Anno, Settlers, Trials, Mario + Rabbids, Trackmania, The Crew, Scott Pilgrim, Roller Champions, Rayman, Starlink, etc. Most of those were within the last 4-5 years! Compare that to EA or Activisionās output on non mainline releases.
If you strip out sequels, you've maybe one or two games in there from the past five years tops. But I was talking more at their larger budget releases. Their indie-level output has always been good, but anything with a large budget? Very Ubisofted. The Crew absolutely has those elements, as far as they can fit them into a racing game.
It makes sense though as thatās what sells. Theyāve pushed forward on those Ubi elements because it works. Horizon Zero Dawn is basically an open world Ubi-element Dino game. Witcher 3 is an open world Ubi-element game. BoTW and TotK have a lot of open world open world Ubi-elements when you break it down. The biggest games continually have open world elements that Ubisoft essentially created, because they work so well. The difference between Ubisoft and these other companies though is that Ubisoft doesnāt neglect their lower-budget releases and will try something out even if it wonāt sell millions of units. I think a big part of this is the guy who founded Ubi is still there and he lets the teams do their thing. Even though he wasnāt implicated in the recent workplace sexual harassment issues, it seems like he is actually passionate about games and has been in games-related businesses since the ā80s. Iād love to listen an interview and hear it from himself tho.
You are right, it is, but I thought it's worth drawing the difference between "ha, easy money" and "I have no choice but to chase the known moneymaker" I would only disagree with Starfield: you can tell by some of the features in the game that they wanted a much broader experience and just weren't able to go through it and lowered their own scope to be able to deliver.
Some is scope, but stuff like the fuel system quite openly having changed from a resource management element to something fairly prefunctory seems like an obvious collision between a more space-sim direction and the standard 'go anywhere, just have fun, you can play all our content in a single playthrough' style that wouldn't jive with the idea of getting genuinely standard or having less casual elements. I've never played a Bethesda game past at least Oblivion that didn't feel like it had obvious powerful compromises (generally in the writing), but Starfield felt particularly hamstrung by a combination of their engine and their formula in a way that I don't think is entirely seperate. Like their physics system and amount of NPC schedule stuff probably makes true open world (i.e. space to planet, or outdoor to interior) streaming problematic. If they didn't have to deliver 'space oblivion' I don't think that'd be the same issue. They have systems for NPC schedules, but due to the problem of travel time and timezones they can't *really* have people eat and sleep anymore. They've got this indepth physics simulation on all the objects but the player barely has any way to interact with it beyond gunfire (you can actually pick up and play with character's hair, though its nigh impossible to do that without accidentally talking to them). They've got the bones of an open-world exploration game, but the world is divided into randomly generated chunks seperated by inappropriately large distances. They've got base building, but travelling to one is difficult and there's functionally no point in doing so, there's a stealth system but good luck ever going through even one fight entirely unseen unless you sink an inordinate amount of time into it. Just element after element in the game because Morrowind/Oblivion/FO3/FO4 had it, even if it doesn't serve the game it is applied to. If they'd been 'risky' and just abandoned that Elder Scrolls/Fallout bones and made something that played entirely different, I think you'd have a more cohesive experience. Though I don't know that players wouldn't have just gone "Wait, this isn't just Fallout with space travel!".
When that basket is one of the biggest gaming franchises around, are you surprised? They could make a new CoD that sells worse than any other CoD game so far and it'd still make many millions more than the best selling Tony Hawk game. They also intentionally don't change, because why rock the boat? If you've found a formula that sells this well, it's risky to try change it.
Except it's a giga-basket that's more efficient than using multiple small ones (despite the vocal minority wanting otherwise), and you also own 2 other farms that are just as profitable for diversification.
I don't know about innovation, but the effort put into CoD is far greater than something like FIFA. There's a reason they need 3 separate developers. The games are highly polished, with small but incredibly detailed linear campaigns (recent CoD issues notwithstanding), and a suite of multiplayer maps to go with each one. They often tinker with game mechanics and make changes regularly. They aren't innovative, but they aren't lazy. And especially with AAA development times growing longer and longer, it's legitimately impressive that they've managed to create a new CoD every year. I'm not saying they shouldn't innovate in these games, just that they're far from lazy.
It's not like it's wrong to call it effort, but it's really just an absurd amount of resources. A lot of the releases are definitely lazy in certain areas. Generally in stuff like actually designing the games (maps in particular, weapon balance recently), BO4 didn't even have a campaign because Fortnite didn't have one, the recent MW campaign was infamous of course. So yeah saying a lot of effort went into it is definitely not wrong, but if we were to say something like labor of love it would just be funny. I rarely get the sense people want to work on these games.
If you think the developers who make Call of Duty donāt want to work on one of the most popular games of all time your crazy. Working on Call of Duty is a dream job for many developers.
Until they actually do it. Dream job on your resume, not dream job to actually work at.
Believe it or not, there are people who just thrive in high pressure environments, and there are absolutely guys happily banging out 60 hour weeks in game development just because it's what they love doing. When I was young and unmarried I definitely had a job I'd have very willingly spent 12 hours a day at...if my bosses weren't forcing me to go home and get some sleep. It was unique, thrilling, and challenging. It was, frankly, *fun*, and there just wasn't much in the world outside that matched it. Definitely a bachelor's game, though.
Minus the recent MW23. That game fucking sucks as far as performance and glitches/bugs are concerned. I donāt know how they managed to make a glorified DLC ten times as buggy as the original game last year.
They arenāt lazy, theyāre incredibly lazy, if they werenāt theyād innovate.
If you think COD doesn't have any innovation, you haven't been playing them.
It doesnāt have innovation because itās CoD. Theyāre not doing anything new, theyāre not making different games, they specifically donāt want to because CoD sells and Itās easy to be lazy But they are lazy, there is no passion or vision to anything they do and there are way too many people working on it for the lacklustre end result.
They have become less and less polished with each iteration recently. MWIIās multiplayer was a disaster at launch and was riddled with technical issues.
I really donāt get the fascination with Call Of Duty, it is quite literally the same game every year. I was bored with the series by the time Black Ops came out.
Itās super chill and easy to get into thatās why. Itās the same type of game every year, you know youāre gonna enjoy it so why not buy it and play if you want. I agree youāll get burnt out, my run was MW2-BO2, but they really arenāt bad games.
That's a lot of it's appeal, you know what you are going to get and it's market tested. It's like Mcdonald or Starbucks, is it the greatest burger or coffee in the world? No but you know what you are always going to get from McDonald's or Starbucks.
And it's fun. I can only.play on weekends so me and the boys will jump on WZ from 9pm -1am and have a blast.
I think it's a combination of the "progression" system (which has had such a negative impact on gaming in my opinion as it conditions players to "need" some sort of grind) and the fact that even if you suck at Call of Duty you can still have fun, it's super easy to kill people, etc. Now granted I'm biased, I play a ton of Halo, and I have some young CoD players in my family and they hate Halo because you can easily get destroyed by more skilled players and not be able to do anything about it. So they gravitate to the "easier" game
Yeah remember when we played games for fun gameplay and that was it, not progression system to keep us coming back but rather just good fun times. Anyways im going outside to yell at the sky
idk what games you played, but competitive online games gave literally always been like this
Modern Warfare released in 2007, my guy
As long as by "always", you actually mean "since 2007".
How old are you? The first game I played with a progression system in MP was CoD4 MW.
>they hate Halo because you can easily get destroyed by more skilled players and not be able to do anything about it. Is that not also the case in Call of Duty?
>the "progression" system (which has had such a negative impact on gaming in my opinion as it conditions players to "need" some sort of grind) That's a pretty solid point. Like every game now has some sort of meta system where you'll fill a meter over time as you play.
This is why I hoped Xdefiant would've been good. F2P game with CoD gameplay could've hurt Activision and made them give a shit
It's comfort gaming. Very little changes, and that's what people are looking for most of the time. Simple progression, quick matches with virtually no stakes. I do get the appeal, but it's also not exactly a life changing experience.
Well why fixing what isnt broken, like EA butchered Battlefield franchise, it isnt even funny. Sometimes when you get right formula you dont need innovate much , you just need quality of life improvement and good amount of good content over time Like i like Age of Empires 2 remaster and how thy released some nice content DLCs with new campaigns (age 4 isn't bad but is so innovative that is not fun to play for me... )
I mean, you say that like people don't play league or TF2 or overwatch or whatever for a decade.
But you don't have to buy TF2 every year.
Is revolutionizing video game microtransactions really that small price to pay? Lol
wow $60 once a year, truly breaking the bank
Sometimes I just like a fun fast paced multiplayer shooter that's not a battle royale, and it's one of the better options out there. I'd rather have Titanfall 3 or tribes though
CoD is a sport title, no different than Counter Strike. $60 for something you play all the time, every year, isn't a bad deal. In the age where it's out the wazoo with DLC it's a little less palatable but it's not like this formula doesn't make sense.
Counter Strike has had 3 main games in 25 years with a heavy focus on competition. So much so that it's hard to enjoy it if you just want to play casually. I'd say COD is very different than Counter Strike.
To people who play it it's mostly a friend's thing. COD even with try hards is still very accessible and a pick up and play type online game, it's market tested and it's become a friends type thing for 15 year now. Your average Joe just wants to come home from work and play a few game with their boys the same way people do with 2k and GTA online. That's the appeal of cod in a nutshell.
How many often do you read "i just want to see the same game" when studios are talking about remakes or new releases? Well, it's the same thing with COD. People that play COD live tat it is already and don't want it to be changed.
not a cod fan or anything, but it's just a habit to people and a known value. the fans know exactly what to expect with cod so it's always a safe buy compared to some unknown shooter or something. so basically, just a comfort food in video game terms.
I got as far as Modern Warfare 2... the original one, not the remake
And yet that one game makes them so much fucking money I can't really fault them for not giving a shit. How many of us wish we could coast on life like that? I sure as shit don't get the appeal to it at all, though.
Money talks. If THPS made as much money as COD, they would have been making THPS 15 by now, but that's just not the case. They don't work on COD as their bread and butter game because they like COD. It's the game that is loved by millions and makes them millions.
If you look at the insane numbers COD pulls, from a business point of view, it makes a lot of sense.
It is lifeless, but it sells a lot. Can't really blame Activision, the consumers are 100% to blame, they are sustaining CoD since forever, this is not a "free to play" trend or anything, they pay full price yearly to keep up playing the multiplayer, it's a bizarre example of addiction in this industry
Yeah, as much as the Reddit Gamers TM get up in arms about stuff like this, it's probably a safe bet that they wouldn't even buy or play something like Tony Hawk 3/4
Toys for Bob went indie so now Xbox has nobody to work on Crash and Spyro
Theyāve already confirmed that they have a deal with Microsoft for publishing, so it very well could be Crash or Spyro.Ā
theyāre now an independent studio but can still work for other publishers, i think they are still making a spyro game.
Doesnāt seem a smart business to me to put all your eggs in one single basket.
It is if that egg is *the* golden egg every year (minus once a decade when Rockstar shows up)
Yeah, I've been hearing about how "CoD is dead fr this time guys I swear" in gaming communities since like 2013. But it doesn't just sell well, it sells *so dominantly well* that the ONLY year it isn't the #1 best seller is when Rockstar releases a game. And not for like 2-3 years, we're coming up on nearly *two decades* of CoD dominance. CoD is going to be the #1 best selling game for longer than the time between the NES and GameCube
Not only that but when lists of top ten games sold in a month are released you'll often see two or even 3 CoD games on there (generally this years game, last years game and sometimes Black Ops 3)
The people that made these decisions got paid 70 billion dollars by Microsoft. Sounds like it worked out ok for them. Who cares about the long term consequences.
Iām gonna break this down to all those reading so itās easy. I have no idea who Iām arguing with, but itās weird they all seem to say the same thing. Call of duty has no growth. How do you grow from it? Where do you grow into? Call of duty breakfast cereal? Call of duty the movie? Call of duty the handgun? Activision investing highly skilled resources heavily into call of duty means they want to maintain the status quo and not grow. They donāt want to invest in other properties that can actually grow. Like tony hawk. Itās a shame. If I was an activision investor Iād be pissed. But then again thereās a solid reason Iām not an activation investor. Nintendo thoughā¦ they know what theyāre doing. They are actually trying. And itās paying out well.
Those yearly COD reskins arenāt going to make themselves. /s
Off to the COD mines with ya
I hate this so much but it makes business sense to put all your resources into releasing your biggest IP ahead of schedule. I hope 3+4 isnāt completely off the table.
I donāt think thatās happening anymore, remaking 3 is one thing but 4? Thatās a completely different game to the previous ones in terms of content amount. It would take them at least twice the time it took them to make THPS1+2.
It was leaked when the original story leaked a year ago that THPS3 was basically done, probably since they just had to import the levels into the old engine. But yeah 4 would be tricky to implement, donāt know how you would do that without doing some heavy engine modifications.
>But yeah 4 would be tricky to implement, donāt know how you would do that without doing some heavy engine modifications. THPS1+2 already has all mechanics 4 added, plus I dont think the larger maps are that big deal. Only thing they'd have to add besides the maps are the NPC's that gives you the missions/goals, since 4 has most goals/missions out of all the games and all the voice acting that comes with it.
Yeah thatās what would probably take so long with 4, itās basically a semi open world game compared to the others. I do think they would redo the voice acting but that wouldnāt be long
It's completely off the table
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
I havent bought a COD since blops I, doing my part.
Call of Duty has cannibalized so much of Activision's development capability over the years, it's honestly insane. Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, Treyarch, Raven, Neversoft, High Moon, Beenox, Toys For Bob, the list goes on and on and on. None of these studios develop anything else anymore, and some have been shuttered completely. Such a waste of talent.
At the very least, Raven Software have recently been pitching a revival of a "*beloved IP*" to Xbox
Kinda sucks how I played the remake and I felt that jolt of nostalgia for about 1, 2 hours or so... then it's gone. I'm not one of those people who are obsessed with nostalgia (tried to replay Shogun 2, felt nothing, etc..). Saying that, it looks like this remake did not sold good numbers (unlike Crash and Spyro), maybe the headache with music licensing, the likeness of the skaters, etc.. all that crap proved to be too much of a hassle for such a small financial return. A real shame, these are iconic games from the PS1 generation
Fuck this. THPS4 was my favourite and after 1+2 I waited for 3+4, but they sent good developers to CoD mines. Why you even need so many people to make another yearly reskin of CoD?
Frankly call of duty really just eat everything at Activision it's kinda insane to be honest. I am hoping now that they're owned by Microsoft that maybe stopping since more games means more for gamepass! Because they really do have a good number of IPs that can easily come back or be remastered.
> Frankly call of duty really just eat everything at Activision it's kinda insane to be honest. https://youtu.be/W3Ww9wigdso?si=1xFLomf6Ng4c4dYh
At the very least, we know that Raven Software have been pitching a revival of a "*beloved IP*" to Xbox. Who knows what that could be though
I think their last game was Singularity and while it didn't sell well I really liked it, so it's good that they're doing something other then supporting COD.
It's just a shame people complain about activision making nothing but the usual games but when they make something different it ends up selling poorly. Hell look at the prince of persia game from ubisoft that came out this year. There's a reason activision does nothing but make CoD all the time.
But didn't Tony Hawk actually sell very well? It's just that nothing sells more than COD
Tony Hawk sold 1 million in its first 2 weeks?
Most developers have a flagship franchise, but Activision is unique in burying all their IPs and putting the majority of their people on COD alone.Ā
Did Prince of Persia actually not make money relative to its production cost, or are they unhappy because a low budget smaller title didn't net them a hundred million dollars?
I don't think it's unreasonable to call 300,000 copies a flop. IDK what the budget is but that's nothing to write home about and likely to be considered a failure.
Sadly you right. People sleep on unique small games. I think even Hi-fi Rush suffered from this
Yep. Games are too expensive to make. When they have an option of making another release for the franchise that you know will sell versus a remake or God forbid a new IP, the choice is obvious.
>Hell look at the prince of persia game i looked for it, it's not on Steam. gee i wonder why it didn't sell
Yeah man, I'm sure all of those console players are pissed they can't play the game on steam....
the console players who wanted to play it played it through subscription so it didn't count as sales gee, i wonder why it didn't sell if it wanted players, shouldve put it on Game Pass. if it wanted sales units, shouldve put it on Steam. the videogame market is not that difficult to figure out. Ubi cared more about pushing their trash subscription service and Epic games money than about having people enjoy the game.
Games have done poorly despite being on Steam, while others have done well without the need to be on the platform (which includes THPS 1+2, which was EGS exclusive for over a year). Not saying the game wouldn't do better with a Steam release, but there is no indication that would have been the deciding factor between a success and a failure.
Fuck ubisoft for actually trying to make a profit instead of handing money over to Valve for doing nothing amirite? [It's on PC and has gone on sale already.](https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/prince-of-persia/the-lost-crown) Just say you're not interested and move on with your day.
im not installing 40 launchers on my steam deck. oh and it doesnt run on steam deck without jumping through a fuckton of hoops. at that point i might as well just pirate it. only reason i pay for games is if they make it easier for me to play them and offer achievements and cloud saves and updates, or simple multiplayer.
People dont like sidescrollers
Yeah why play that when the story has been dead for 10+ years and you can play dead cells if you want to try something actually ādifferentā and are into sidescrollers
For the record this is all based on a Did You Know Gaming video that was released on YouTube yesterday. That's not even the most infuriating part. The first part of the video shows that Vicarious Visions(VV) had a close relationship with Nintendo and was working on a Donkey Kong 3D pitch. Miyamoto might have been involved too and suggested a feature to the team. Activision canceled the project and forced VV to become a Destiny 2 and COD support studio. A 3D DK was terminated because of c level execs.
Vicarious Visions was folded into Blizzard, to work on Diablo, not CoD/Destiny2, and Destiny 2 hadn't even been part of Activision for 2 years when it happened.
Everything you say is covered in the video later on, what OP said was correct. Vicarious Visions weren't allowed to move forward with the DK project or a new Skylanders, in order that they could work on Destiny 2 and COD. It was only later on that VV were folded into Blizzard, after Blizzard were impressed with VV's in-progress work on Diablo 2: Resurrected.
The video mentions that VV folding into Blizzard happened aftet they supported COD and Destiny 2.
Its still wild how Activision has 3 studios working on different versions of CoD, and at one point they almost had 5 studios working on 5 different versions of CoD annually (I cant remember one of them, but at one point they tried to contract Gearbox to make CoD games too). They have all these other IPs and all these other resources and yet cannot (or refuse to) produce mostly anything else. But...money talks...and as long as people keep buying them in the millions and whaling for skins, itll keep happening.
No I think they still have 5 studios working exclusively on cod. Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Bee Knox, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer. Toys for Bob used to be included but they managed to escape the cod mines after the Microsoft buyout by going indie. Thereās probably another studio or 2 that Iām forgetting but I think that covers them.
Wow. So they did eventually make it up to 5 since that happened. That's wild, but it makes sense. Especially with Warfare and no telling how many they have as support studios. Makes sense but it's even crazier that they can't spare anything for a different IP.
**Infinity Ward**, **Treyarch Studios** and **Sledgehammer Games** are the primary development studios **Raven Software** and **Beenox** then do most of the heavy lifting for Call of Duty: Warzone, while also chipping in on the mainline games and mobile spin-offs **High Moon Studios** serves as an ad-hoc support studio. **Vicarious Visions** (*now known as Blizzard Albany*) did/do the same **Demonware** specialises in networking/matchmaking across all of Activision's titles **Activision Shanghai**, **Solid State Studios** and **Digital Legends** all work on Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile **Team Ricochet** is a smaller team dedicated to implementing and updating Call of Duty's anti-cheat measures **Toys for Bob** and **Radical Entertainment** both served as ad-hoc CoD support devs too. The former has spun off from the company, and the latter is essentially a ghost studio that's been slowly gutted over the years. I believe there was only 6 employees at Radical by the time Xbox acquired Activision
> Its still wild how Activision has 3 studios working on different versions of CoD, and at one point they almost had 5 studios working on 5 different versions of CoD annually Looking at the startup screen, I counted 10 different companies, (although Toys for Bob went indie, so it's 9 as of now).
Yeah, I had to Google it myself too because its crazy. Especially since the other person said they have 5 studios working on CoD. Makes sense, but thats just wild. Now its 9?! Apparently its still just 3 main development studios, but they have all those other studios that still help a LOT with the development and get credit for it. But thats a whole lot of resources to dedicate to these games...9 studios?
That's just inductive of modern day gaming. Multi-player + Warzone, and while zombies doesn't seem to get much work done as of now, there's at least a skeleton crew still making sure things move smoothly. Then you also have the constant stream of new content and also Warzone mobile being released recently, and a big feature of that game is cross progression with the console/PC game. AAA Multi-player games require a lot more man power these days if you want to keep up.
People keep saying this, but look at every other AAA studio, it takes most of them 7+ years to release a game at all these days. Makes some sense to me that releasing a CoD every single year and having it be the best selling game most years is an insane task that would take a ton of work.
That hurts a lot lol, 3 was my favorite. Loved the 1+2 HD ones, was very much so hoping they would do 3. Damn :(
The gaming industry needs to move away from the big publishers. Every work of passion is either sidelined or just completely forgotten about in the name of profit
Thps peaked at 2 anyways. I get why people would want 3 onward but also I get why Activision would look else where for profit.
Not sure I buy this claim because "3+4" doesn't make sense to me. 3 plays like 1 and 2, but 4 marked a departure from the formula where the player could just freely explore the levels and talk to NPCs for missions and challenges. It would have made more sense to remake 3's content as DLC for 1+2 or something.
I'm not a COD fan, but I dunno how well THPS 3+4 would sell as a $40 standalone release. I feel like it'd do better as DLC for 1+2.
I'd buy it. I bought THPS1+2 on launch day as an explicit message of "do more like this!" More fool me, I guess.
Yeah, I do that for certain kinds of games (like anytime Konami releases anything Castlevania, but they don't seem to have gotten the message either).
Dlc sells usually less than standalone games though.
I mean as much as it sucks that it happened it makes logical sense. You only have to look at the profits from each franchise to see why they made such an obvious choice.
Cant they just come back to it? Did the first ones not sell well enough to justify a 2nd remake?
A huge shame. 1+2 was phenomenal. I would have loved to get a refreshed version of the THUG games too.
This was 100% the correct business decision. I imagine creating a little jangling fob on the end of a gun takes about an hour or two of work. So like what? Realistically? 50 bucks.Ā It makes triple that the first ten seconds it's on a store. Gets rotated in and out of stores across different games.Ā Vs Tony Hawk remasters. Which are niche millennial nostalgia games. Of which they already served once. Who all will double dip? Right business decision.Ā Still terrible.Ā