And even those failures-all of them-were, in fact, the best selling games of their respective years. It is the most successful video game franchise of all time, by far. And each failed.”Ĭall of Duty is complicated. “And that, ultimately, is the problem: The real failures of Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare is that they did not garner enough interest to grow them into three-game arcs that could help pad out a decade of gaming. “I can’t see Activision creating a new series out of this war,” I explained. In August, when I had the chance to test the Call of Duty: WWII multiplayer experience in beta, I described it as an unwelcome throwback. “But its biggest fans want more Modern Warfare or Black Ops multiplayer mayhem. “As with last year’s blockbuster Battlefield comeback, Battlefield 1-which features a World War I setting and very strong single-player campaign-Activision is not surprisingly plumbing its past, and nostalgia, in an effort to regain the support of its biggest fans,” I wrote. When Activision announced that it was returning to the World War II setting for the next Call of Duty, I noted that World War II was not the answer for a blockbuster game franchise that has lost its way.