Activision believes the Call of Duty franchise will still continue to grow.
European VP Michael Sportouch stressed to MCV that the publisher has not experienced difficulties regarding the continued growth of the Call of Duty series:
Even with Modern Warfare 3, we are continuing to see growth of the franchise – specifically in new markets and also some mature, established markets in Europe. And we want to keep pushing the franchise in new directions. We’ve signed a Call of Duty partnership in China with Tencent, where we will grow the franchise with a free-to-play, micro-transaction game.
We certainly don’t think the growth is over and the growth could come from an actual retail game like Black Ops II.
Sportouch said that the extended console life cycle has helped the IP grow, as has the feedback they receive from fans pertaining to Call of Duty‘s multiplayer experiences:
We have benefitted from the extended console cycle but what we have really benefitted from, and I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, is this huge amount of feedback and data from the multiplayer backbone. But yes, that helps us refine the experience, to understand what people like and how they play.
That’s an aspect of what’s been happening during this console title. The increase in connectivity on consoles worldwide has gone up while the consoles have been unchanged and that’s supported what we do in multiplayer.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 launches worldwide on November 13th.
