Activision won't meddle with Infinity Ward recovery - Report

I just saw MW2 at my local GameStop and it was 52.95 new, 46.95 second handed. One year after release. IW might as well be dead for Activision if they keep the game that expensive forever. At least that money could be spent in something other than Kotik's poket...

@JimmyJimJim Of course Guitar Hero is a trend game. People will buy Guitar Hero just because it's a great party game. Over and over again. That's why Activision can continually pump out more games, whereas Rock Band only releases DLC music packs opposed to full on games with just a couple new songs. I too thought CoD4 was just plain amazing at its time, but Infinity Ward hasn't been pushed to seriously revolutionize, kinda like the jump between GTA3 to GTA4. That sort of revolution. Blizzard is good, I have liked WoW's popularity and intend on playing it someday just because everyone else has at one point in their life. StarCraft 2 seems to be pretty cool too. But I don't have a gaming PC, so until then.

@k1ll8_saurav It's all good, you have your opinion. Personally I always think if it aint broke, don't fix it. The game was pretty revolutionary 3 or 4 years back I think it was when they started adding in killstreaks and perks it added some spice to the genre. Now they can just milk it till eventually someone else can top em. Which personally in an arbitrary point of view I don't think any shooter has, It's similar to blizzards mentality really. Not looking to revolutionize anything. Just make really well polished games, not that MW2 was polished but you know what I mean. Guitar hero has definitely been milked though but again its a trend game gotta milk it while the milking is good. nba 2k has never been published under EA, not sure where you're getting that from but perhaps I'm wrong. I know EA tried to buy 2kspots at one time maybe you're getting that mixed up?. I can agree with you that neither EA or Activsion are that great, I'll always be a blizzard loyal myself... until they give me a reason not to.

@JimmyJimJim If they fix the spawning, the damage, and get rid of Commando (which they have), what then? The charm obviously wore off of Modern Warfare 2 nearly a year after release. People are complaining it's more of the same stuff. Maybe not where you live, but down here in Florida, a lot of people complain that Modern Warfare 2 is just the same stuff, yet play it because they have nothing else worth playing. Halo 3 is still going strong 3 YEARS after release. I think the "realistic" aspect of the game (you can hear the interviewee say, during the E3 conference, they wanted realistic and movie-like) has been dropped as soon as multiplayer was announced. No one uses smiley faces as holographs for their scopes, although that can be an exception to player customization. No one uses RC cars during a war zone. And that new Predator Missile can fly in all directions around the map, allowing the user to sit there in a corner and fly around until a clump of enemies appear and then BOOM! Call of Duty is broken, but you may be a prevailing fan. I respect your decision, but reality is reality. Treyarch won't even recapture my interest in that garbage.

@JimmyJimJim Okay, EA doesn't exactly MAKE the best games out there. But I say better games are released under EA than Activision. Call of Duty has been milked, whether or not you agree. Guitar Hero has been milked, whether or not you agree. Spider-Man has been milked, whether or not you agree. I could go on forever. I mean, look at how many Spider-Man games have been released in the last five years? I personally liked NBA Live. Neither 2K10 or Live 10 have any NOTABLE differences, and both have still been published under EA. Command & Conquer 4 wasn't THAT bad. Compared to previous ones, yeah, but without experimentation, how do you ever know what's good and what's not? EA might not have the best customer service, but Activision oftentimes releases broken games. I think neither EA nor Activision are good, but EA is definitely better. There are other publishers out there that can release better games (Square Enix, for example).

@k1ll8_saurav and not to continue on with this long winded diatribe but personally I think the multiplayer looks good, I think the major things that need to be fixed are A they need to make either the weapons less powerful or increase the players HP a tiny bit. It looks like they did that as you have to shoot em a little more to kill em. B obviously fix commando or just axe it, hopefully with the full multiplayer preview they'll show what they did about that. C fix the spawns, probably my biggest problem with the game is the horrible spawning mechanics, I don't know how many times I'll kill someone only to have him spawn 5 feet away from me. Other than that though I own at the game and love it.

@k1ll8_saurav Pretty much every game based off a movie they release Black and White 2, drawing board; Lets dumb it down, "EA says that's brilliant!" Oh hey look blizzard is trying to come out with a FPS in starcraft ghost, Lets release a command and conquer FPS, and lets rush it out to beat ghost, "which never gets released cause unlike some companies *cough* EA *cough*. Blizzard doesn't release crap for the sake of making money. Spore... yea, glad I dl'ed it and why are we talking about activisions lack of other sports games and vice versa?. This is way off topic and completely moot, the point of the topic is EA is known for releasing crappy games. look what they did to the newest command on conquer, that game was a joke. Here's a rather pungent quote from analyst Evan Wilson who had said, "Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand. According to our ongoing survey of GameRankings.com aggregated review data, Electronic Arts' overall game quality continues to fall.." I needn't even mention how notorious EA is when it comes to releasing games that aren't ready cause they know they can just patch the inane amount of BUGS sometime later. All I can say is I've wasted a ton of money on crappy EA games.

@k1ll8_saurav you say activision is known for releasing crap and name one game called guitar hero which is just a trend game and nothing really new can be done to trendy games buddy. You just release a ton of em while the trend is still hot to make your money. As for EA, One NBA 2k10 is from 2ksports, EA doesn't make nba 2k10. They make nba live, and that game sucks, need for speed, is pretty crappy I sure did love need for speed undercover, apparently so did ign with a 4.0 rating.., madden, EA's Office room : Oh look 2k is only charging 25 bucks for their football game AND it's better, What should we do guys?. I know instead of trying to compete when we know we're too incompetent to make quality games anymore. lets just buy the NFL franchise so only we can develop games?. "EA BRILLIANT!" the demo is just like last years game... it sucks. Infact I think it was last years game, besides hearing what sounds like ten people chant "jets jets jets". Bad company 2 is alright, not my cup of tea though. Lets look back at medal of honor airborne, BOY! that game was really good. EA really knows how to make smart AI. Oh look lets try and compete with mafia and release a horrible godfather game, YAY EA! and since were money grumbling troglodytes we'll actually try ripping the people off for more money with a sequel Theirs also a plethora of crappy James bond games they release, but they'll never be able to touch goldeneye... because they're EA.

@athenian29 I guess you're right. Maybe the greed got to them? At least they learned their lesson that no matter how successful you might be, you're always guaranteed a f**k up.

@k1ll8_saurav The advertising campaign for MW2 was large, but I don't think it detracted much from development. IW had 2 years to make the game, which was more than adequate for all of their previous titles. I remain convinced that a beta period would have helped Modern Warfare 2 far more than a later release date. The hacks, the lag, the matchmaking, the VAC, the killstreaks - all of these problems can be traced back to Infinity Ward refusing to accept feedback from their player base.

@JimmyJimJim The only thing that looks sick about Black Ops is the singleplayer, since it's just about foolproof that's going to fail. The multiplayer is what I'm not so sure about. And EA is known for releasing crap? Activision is known for releasing crap. All their Guitar Hero games have been precisely the same, just with new music and special effects. EA doesn't generally release crap. Bad Company 2, Need for Speed: Shift, Rock Band, NBA Live 10, NBA 2K10, Madden NFL 10, Burnout Paradise, and .skate are a few to name. Hell, Bad Company 2 is the fourth most played game on the 360. Comparing Activision's lack of sports games besides the Tony Hawk franchise (which really isn't competition for .skate), lack of racing games (only one, Blur, that's made big news), lack of quality shooters (Call of Duty needs to redeem itself before being called a "quality product"), and the milked Guitar Hero series which just doesn't stand a chance against Rock Band. Band Hero was nothing more than milked Guitar Hero and DJ Hero was the only recent success in this department.

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@NeonNinja Of course a game depends on quality. Without quality, we'd just have milked games released every other month. But, the time of release matters significantly. Call of Duty 4 was released in a period where there weren't that many modern warfare FPS. Because COD4 was released in that time frame before Bad Company was released, it received universal acclaim. Had Bad Company been released earlier, the glamor of all the new modern warfare military gadgets would've been less appealing. Because Saints Row was released in a time where there weren't that many third person sandbox shooters, it was given pretty positive reviews. If GTA4 came out earlier than Saints Row, then Saints Row wouldn't have been where it is now.

@athenian29 Sorry, I misworded it. I was up at 2 in the morning, so I wasn't exactly fully awake. What I meant was that Activision rerouted all the money to advertising instead of actual development. Had more money been spent on the development and a less strict release date, the overall quality would've been MUCH better. If the release date had been pushed back to, say March or April 2010, then it would've had a beta period and more time in refinement.

@Gammet25 I mostly agree with you there, although there are a few other developers they own who are noteworthy. Besides Infinity Ward and Treyarch, of the Call of Duty brand, they also own Neversoft (of Guitar Hero III-and-onward fame, as well as the older Tony Hawk games). More importantly, they also own Blizzard Entertainment (thanks to their acquisition of Vivendi a few years ago), although they don't dare mess around with them - and for good reason.

@k1ll8_saurav 6) That's why digital distribution has been so good to the many studios that I listed - it makes it much easier for the game to reach the masses, rather than having to have every copy boxed - in which case, the distribution company takes a chunk of your hard-earned profits. In regards to your Tenchu Z example, I've never even heard of it - all I know is that Tenchu is/was a stealth combat series that has fallen from grace since its original PS1 outings. As far as I know, it hardly qualifies as "indie". Looking forward to your response! :)

@k1ll8_saurav 2) I'm not highly inclined to believe in Respawn just yet. Activision DID have a fairly big advertising campaign (exclusive ads during NBA games, etc.), but that's beside the point. The design decisions that people were upset about - PC matchmaking, migrating to Valve Anti-Cheat instead of keeping Punkbuster, the lack of a beta period leading to horrible glitches and exploits, obscenely unbalanced killstreaks - were all decisions made by Infinity Ward, the developers. I'm not 100% certain what your point was in that paragraph - you seemed to go from defending Activision and IW to dissing them. Could you please clarify? 5) When it came to Infinity Ward, "we already knew [they] could do the job" too. But they didn't, obviously. So there's no need to ignore good games that come out just because they were from a consistently high-quality developer. Many dev houses can attest to how hard it is to keep up their standard of quality, and each game should be judged on its own merits - which ties back in to what John Carmack said.

Infinity Ward is just like Bungie. Bungie got fed up with getting screwed by Microsoft so they left.

Screw Activision. What they've done makes them a pathetic gaming company. They never really seemed that prestigous besides the modern warfare anyway.

@k1ll8_suarav Part 2 Halo could have launched with other shooters in 2001 and it still would have been the game that every dev. team copied. Like I told you in an earlier post, the timing of a release matters, but quality matters most. It's why people weren't aping Goldeneye or Perfect Dark. They were good by console standards but compared to PC shooters of the era like Quake and Half-Life they weren't as good. Halo on the other hand was spectacular as a shooter and not simply by virtue of being on a console. So release timing matters, but not to the extent that you make it out to be. Look at IW. They didn't truly get big until 2007 when Modern Warfare hit, and that wasn't at a particular time or anything. It was just the release of their new game.

@k1ll8_suarav I'm splitting my comment in two, this is the first part. OK, fine, I can see what you mean now that you've explained it. It isn't a fact that we won't see the old quality of IW like you make it out to be, but it is a distinct possibility and there is in fact a very high possibility of it. Now, what you're saying about the success of a game hinging on when it comes out as being important is vital in some sense (particularly at the start of a new console generation), it isn't the only thing that matters. You say that Halo wouldn't have succeeded if other shooters were released in the same launch window as it. But I disagree. Console shooters were uniformally average before Halo. It brought a new control scheme that all shooters follow now, it nailed the core PC FPS values on a console, it brought coop, limited weapon sets, open battlefields with AI friendlies, wily enemies, 16 person multiplayer, and tons of options. Compare it to Perfect Dark which came out only one year before Halo and the game simply doesn't hold up to today's play standards while Halo still does despite both games offering similar multiplayer options.

I bloody hope that Infinity Ward make a recovery. Activision had no right to do what they did.

This could have all been avoided if Activision wasn't so damn greedy and just paid the employees their f****** royalties and bonus payments!

god i really hope activision is forced to pay every cent of what they're being sued for.

Activision too greedy now. money over quality. next games in the series will be same thing with nothing new added. Well it was a good run. I'll never trust the brand now.

CoD became a seriously moronic franchise, I'm going to stick to ARMA II and Battlefield from now on

i borrowed mw2 from my friend cuz i am an avid COD series fan and after playing it it looked like an insult to COD series

@athenian29 1) You're right haha. 2) Although we shouldn't given Respawn a "free pass", I think we should though deeply believe in them. Because Activision wasn't pressuring them about profits and rerouting all the money towards advertising, Modern Warfare was a success. Because Activision got greedy and spent $200 million on advertising instead of splitting the development money equally, Modern Warfare 2 was a total failure in most Call of Duty fan's eyes, because it got too carried away. 3) True. 4) Yeah, sorry for the confusing paragraph. Should've rewritten it properly. 5) Well, there definitely were good games, but the games you listed were developed by trusted developers. Besides Bayonetta, everything was developed by a developer who we already knew could do the job. 6) There are many small development studios out there, but trying to release a real game, as in with a full box and everything, will most likely result in a failure. There's a small chance that the community will love it, like LIMBO, but others, like Tenchu Z, will not be received as warmly.

@NeonNinja I quote, "No one keeping up with the news of Infinity Ward is just gonna buy Modern Warfare 3." The whole paragraph might've been a little confusing, and I apologize for that. I should've worded it better. What I meant by the leadership positions is that it won't be the same. Let's say the old Infinity Ward could make x amount of features into a game in x amount of time. The new IW would take x+2 (hypothetically) time to make the same x features. Of course, the team would eventually get used to it and then maximize their time, but until then, we won't see the old quality of IW. And they might even take a new direction that we might or might not like (more focused on storyline and not epicness). And although a lot of people won't realize this (because they don't think like me), but a large portion of a game's success depends on its time of release. If there were an overabundance of FPS titles released on the Xbox at Halo's release, then it wouldn't have been well received and would've been a failure.

Kids, Activision is an Evil Empire. A Very Bad man is leading them and is destroying our way of life.

@killeroo how on earth did you deduce that? Sure Activision messed up horribly and hopefully they'll pay for it through those lawsuits, and they're making IF work on MW3 which most of the employees there didn't want to do. However they're recruiting new staff and are making an effort to keep the studio open rather than just cutting them loose. How is that not helping them recover?

in other words we f**ked em up and were not going to help them recover

@k1ll8_saurav 4) Ah. I misunderstood, and thought you meant that nobody would buy Modern Warfare 3. How I'm reading it now is that nobody would buy a Call of Duty AFTER MW3, which - if it's as much of a fiasco - would certainly destroy the brand once and for all. 5) How many good games in the last year? We've had a boatload, even if your interests are restricted - Assassin's Creed II, Bad Company 2, Bayonetta, Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III, Heavy Rain, Joe Danger, Just Cause 2, Mass Effect 2, NEW Super Mario Bros. Wii, Red Dead Redemption, Resident Evil 5 Gold, Splinter Cell Conviction, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Starcraft II, Super Street Fighter IV - I could go on. I'm not even interested in a lot of those, and I still acknowledge their "good"-ness. 6) No need to scroll through Google and Wikipedia. Just look at the catalogs in Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and Playstation Network. We've got companies like 2D Boy, thatgamecompany, PixelJunk Studios, Hello Games, The Behemoth, and so many, many more. Those dev houses certainly aren't failing. Hope to hear your response soon! :) P.S: Sorry about putting it in 2 parts, but maximum comment size is only 1500 characters and this is over 2400. :lol:

@k1ll8_saurav Before I continue the conversation, thanks for keeping it civil. :) 1) You're most likely correct - nobody even remembers 2015 studios anymore, despite the superb job they did on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Then the exact same thing happened - the top guys left to make IW. It must feel like deja vu all over again for West, Zampella and co. 2) John Carmack said in a recent interview with Playstation Official Magazine that "I don't think that people [in this case meaning PS3 owners who check out Rage, which the article was about] should give a developer a free pass because of their history." We made that mistake with Modern Warfare 2, and paid the price - which is the crux of our discussion in the first place. It's also my main point: after Modern Warfare 2, the folks at Respawn don't deserve any "free pass" whatsoever. 3) Square certainly used to be a developer back in the "Squaresoft" days, but nowadays they're just as much a publisher. Just Cause 2 was made by an in-house developer they picked up during their Eidos acquisition, as are most of their "Square Europe" titles like that. You are right, however, when it comes to their "classic" franchises like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts.

I hope the new Infinity Ward goes down and takes Kotick with it.

Bobby Kotick deserves a 1080 quickscope to the head.

The sad part is, millons will buy the next modern warefare game despite if it is good or bad...

Probably this new blood will bring new inovations but probably not

I see nothing but negativity from all the things kotick says. He ran IW to the ground and now he's saying he doesn't want to 'tamper with the recovery'.

Maybe as a company they won't but I bet their CEO has plans of his own.

They won't need to because most of the top developers left...leaving Activision to hire people they wanted in that position. I still am hoping Activision loses the lawsuit...but know it doesn't matter who makes Call of Duty...in the end people won't care and will come in masses to buy the latest CoD title.

So after they pretty much gutted the studio, all the talent left, and they rolled in another development studio to cover all the empty spots they aren't going to mess with them anymore? Sure you are Activision, sure you are....

what a strange statement. Activision saying the above is basically re-phrasing "we know, and you know we stamped on Infi-Ward's privates in front of all of you - but don't worry, we won't be making that mistake again..." they may as well just settle their cases with West, Zampella and co now, because the fact that they're saying they won't "interfere with the recovery" just points a big red neon sign at the fact that they DID screw with things beforehand. Oh Activision, you're like a hated 5-star gaming soap-opera... when will you learn?

Won't ever buy another Call of Duty. I might rent black ops to play through the single player but thats about it. and MW3? ... another boosting prestige lobby infected game no thanks.

@k7z7 lol what? you act as if this financial problem has just occured... It's been going on for four/five years now and still the gaming meca posts profitable sales. Odd time to bring that up when the number don't add up to your favor. Black ops looks sick so I can't wait to play that but not to sure about MW3, quite a bit of turmoil they went through to be releasing a game within a year.. a quality one anyways. But we'll see. and I wouldn't be too worried about Medal of Honor, EA is known for releasing crap so I could really careless what EA does anymore. All they care about is hyping up games then releasing mediocre garbage early that's usually buggy so they dont have to waste more money on development.

too late Activision...you never, ever, kick the hen that lays the golden egg. even if Activison thinks IW's monetary claims were too high, a future release of modern warfare X would still cover the bonuses given AND give profits to the publisher.are they THAT confident they're going to get another successful title now with black ops? aside all the bad publicity Activision got, medal of honor is just around the corner, and competition will only get stiffer since there's a huge financial problem out there with people now being less willing to spend that easy.

I am done with COD series thank you....won't be buying Black Ops. Respawn FTW!

mw3? for the love of god. just leave us alone ill probably buy it too. god damnit

What a joke, they already tampered with them and ended up gutting the studio. While they may have new talent that is good, it will in no way be the same as before. All of the department leads and writers have left the company (even the HR head in charge of hiring left), leaving behind only those willing to kiss Activision's butt. They can in no way have the same "culture" as they had before - only what Activision wants the public to perceive as they continue to shovel the PR BS.

I'll be looking at Infinity Ward games just as I would any other new studio now. I would not confidently say that they are going to make great games considering the high number of Senior positions that left the company. It's going to be a new group of programmers and leaders and that means its a completely new entity, even if the title of the company stays the same. Activision isn't worried because the majority of people won't know about the drama and will buy whatever they put out because its "from the people who brought you Modern Warfare and MW2." It's a marketing decision that may or may not work to their benefit.