Out with the old and in with the new.

Michael Barnes wrote: Yeah, but that's like a 10 million unit dropoff from MW3- which released just three years ago. And even if it somehow manages to cover that 10 million differential, you're still NOWHERE near A BILLION DOWNLOADS. Think about it. if even HALF of the Temple Run downloads either were bought for a dollar or result in a single one dollar IAP purchase, that is still $500 million in revenue generated.

Ghosts was also the lowest rated Call of Duty game (I think) ever released...with a general consensus among reviewers and players that it really had nothing new to offer.

The really competitive players, the eSports crowd and whatnot...they're all up into MOBAs now.

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First of all, good discussion.

Where are you getting that the really competitive players are into MOBAs? The biggest prize pools are still for Call of Duty. It's what the top teams are still scrimming all the time.

I agree that Ghosts had bad reviews (worst since World at War). You're comparing the sales to MW3 but you should be comparing it to last year's Black Ops II which sold more than 24 million copies and was only a year ago. The timing of the Ghosts release is what killed it. It came out before the new consoles were out so people were waiting and eventually by the time they were ready to buy it, it was no longer being hyped like Titanfall and other games. Also the latest Battlefield does a better job at taking advantage of the new hardware.

You say that the AAA studios don't understand this new gaming reality but do you? You say that if Temple Run had cost a dollar, it would have made a fortune but that's showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the mobile game market. If it had cost a dollar, it would have sold 100,000 copies maybe. It gets a billion downloads because it became a freemium game (they switched it to this after initially pricing it at 0.99$ because sales were lacklustre. It is a perfect free game for what you get. It wouldn't sell at a dollar cuz it's just not good enough.

I still agree that the AAA studios don't 'get it.' They see that freemium works so both Call of Duty and especially Assassin's Creed have a ton of microtransactions but they still cost full price to buy the base game! These greedy bastards want their cake and to eat it too.

Anyway we'll know the real deal of where the shooter market is at after this year's Advanced Warfare it out, now that people have their consoles and will react to a new game release properly. I have a feeling it and the eventual Half-Life 3 will sell like crazy.

That's not to say the game environment is not changing. It's just that SOME franchises are protected because of industry support and a loyal fanbase.

Michael Barnes wrote: So I think the writing is on the wall, the era of the big budget, blockbuster military shooter is heading the way of Tony Hawk games and plastic instruments. I'm not sure that the AAA houses have an exit strategy in place other than to wallow in open world crap, which is likewise about to crash IMO.

Normally I roll my eyes about your videogame industry prognostications, but in this case I think you're right. I think there's MODERN MILITARY shooter fatigue, even among regular bros. I don't think it's indicative of shooter popularity plummeting, though, just this type of them is played out.

There will always be an over-saturated type of game out there. Games cost so much fucking money to make now; nobody can afford to drop a hundred mil into a concept that isn't proven. Cheaper games and indies will test new concepts, but big budgets go towards things that will sell. Until that fateful day when a massive budget game flops like a sack of shit, and that's starting to happen to companies like Square.

I don't think open world games are going anywhere, because it's not a genre as much as it is a design structure. You can have an open world platformers, racing games, RPGs or shooters. These will stick around, but I'd be surprised if shooters aren't replaced by something else within the next five years.