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Expectations for the last installment of Call of Duty, which debuted last year, clashed with reality – the shooter recorded much worse results than the publisher could have expected. In its latest report, Activision outlines a number of factors that contributed to the failure.
Call of Duty Vanguard is not one of the most successful premieres of the American publisher in recent years. Investors used to breaking records and growing profit bars could have fallen into a considerable panic over the results of the game – Activision did not boast about the level of sales, and at the beginning of the year we informed that despite being the leader in the rankings, the new part had the worst premiere in 14 years .
The reports are confirmed by the company’s latest annual financial report released on April 30. As indicated by the editorial staff of Kotaku, the latest results of Activision Blizzard are about USD 300 million worse than forecasts – the company’s authorities see failure, among others, in the reception of Call of Duty Vanguard, pointing to the way the production was carried out.
While Call of Duty remains one of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time, our 2021 premium release didn’t meet our expectations, we believe primarily due to our own execution.”
Interestingly, later in the document you can read that one of the reasons why the game received much less attention is its location of events – from the following passage it can be concluded that players clearly do not prefer the realities of World War II.
“The game’s World War II setting didn’t resonate with some of our community and we didn’t deliver as much innovation in the premium game as we would have liked.”
The indicated problems, however, are to be solved by Modern Warfare 2, which, according to the assurances, will be “the most ambitious plan in the history of Call of Duty” – the owners of Activision Blizzard believe that “a return to the Modern Warfare scenery, which provided us with the most successful Call of Duty title in history” will guarantee an increase in sales bars.
It is a pity that the report also failed to take into account the impact of reports of a sexist work culture, harmful conditions and any negligence committed by multiple team leaders over the years …
