Are the COD games unusually resistant to price drops or am I paranoid?
Because Activision is greedy, and prices don't fall because there is still lots of ppl who will buy their trash even at that discounts.
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Pretty much this. Activision hates sales and will do their best to keep prices as high as possible for as long possible.
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+1, tho i stopped buying ... (mostly because ping issued :-()
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well for me it was mostly because the crappy ping i have, but also because they started to recycle the plot and features in the games and stopped considering anything else but $$$ (most resent ghost title...didnt check after that)
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I suppose it's because they are very expensive to make with all the technological progress they spend way to much to make that game. Since in CoD graphics are on the top level, same goes for sound and etc. those games have to be expensive. About the sales? I think it's company's decision - Blizzard. And Blizzard games are very resistant to those things because of quality, so my guess is - they aren't just greedy but they do what Blizzard says them. On the other hand I don't see Blizzard starting huge sales of CoD games, it wouldn't be in their style. So that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the topic.
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You're kidding right? Take any CoD games from any year and compare them top games from the same year and you'll realize that the graphics are..unimpressive to say the least. Black Ops 2 looks like a piece of shit if you compare it to Far Cry 3 or Dishonored. Don't even get me started on Ghosts compared to Tomb Raider or Bioshock infinite. You're just spouting non-sense and trying to excuse Activision's bullshit marketing strategy. Which is based completely on greed and being ass-holes.
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Did you miss your sarcasm pill? He even said the company that owns CoD is blizzard, lol
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Wasn't really sure. Hence the reason why I started by asking if he's kidding :-p. But he is right about one thing: these games do cost enormous amounts of cash to be made. Only problem is that most of that money goes into marketing, not production.
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You are right - I am sorry for messing up bout Blizzard. About the Bioshock and Dishonoured - I suppose there games don't only have nice graphics but also very nice aesthetics. But you are right about marketing thing, they burn a lot of money to keep bonfire lit. They need to get it back so they take it from people who already like those games or those who buy marketing thing which isn't the best way to promote the game. And again sorry for Blizzard thing - I totally f*cked it up so I admit it - I got the merging thing wrong. And I don't like Call of Duty at all(okay that's actually a lie, cause I really liked CoD 2 back when I played it), it turned into dying cow they are milking over and over. But I believe company as big as Activision must have their reasons for doing so. After all you're the one who decides - you don't like their games - you don't buy them - you don't vote for them. Every title and company is built upon people who buy those games and that way vote by their money, too few people buy CoD - no new CoD next year(Which isn't that bad idea, maybe they'll use time to create new cool game that won't have very strict development time frame of 1 year).
P.S. Rpbns4ever thanks for covering me bro =D
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They release one every year, there's no reseaon for them to drop it because you will just buy the next one which cost the same. Honestly don't even bother with the series unless you are willing to drop 60$+usd a year.
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why do you care ? cod4 is the latest nice cod, but it's almost dead, it's not worth.
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Not just COD, but pretty much everything published by Activision, for a game collector is quite annoying they never go above 70% and COD barely 50%
Its the same with Nintendo Products, there's never a good time to buy them and with time it only gets more difficult
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Yep, luckily i'm not an Activision fan.
Imho Activision is worse than Ubisoft.
They both like to publish n+1 games, but at least Ubisoft is decent enough to cut base price after a while.
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Even that trash Walking Dead Survival Instinct they made so fuckin trash and they still sell it and incredibly high prices.
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Last time I played it had quite some servers, enough to be paying for some hours a day.
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I'd like to buy some of the older ones for single player. I quite liked MW and WaW. I wouldn't mind trying out BO II, though I really didn't like the first one.
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As long as people keep buying them at that price, it makes no sense for Activision to lower their prices, so yes, they are exceptionally price drop resistant, but for games selling as well as CoD, it would be a bad move from Activisions side to lower the prices too much.
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Exactly. People can call Activision greedy if they want, but this is pure supply and demand economics at work. If most people are still willing to pay these prices, then why in the world would they be lowered?
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Expensive? BO 1 for 4€ BO II for 6€ and MW2 for 5€, MW1 in any cheap trade.
Row keys from PL, who buy CoD games on "super" 50% OFF sales?
(don't ask me where, i do not remember it, its over 1 year, i only know its from PL game store)
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I wanted to buy CoD1 but for such old game, it's so expensive!
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The same reason Blizzard's game are overpriced: they are known and hyped franchises and the little children and the plebs keep buying them even if they are gods-awful terrible.
They are like the TransFormers (or Bayformers) movies, if you want a good comparison.
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All up to WarCraft III, where I finally gave up on the terrible game mechanics and decided to not bother with them any more; it's not worth my time to see the same broken game again and again just for the story.
I tried to understand why people like Blizzard games, but they are among the worst-designed, most unbalanced titles in RTS and ARPG I have ever encountered, including one-man indie jobs. (I especially love how the fans swoon over the "balance" of StarCraft, which is one of the most rebalanced and patched game in history, where they were constantly rebalancing stuff ten years after release because it was still exploitable and broken.)
All they do well is writing stories and building lore. Especially the latter, so no wonder that WarCraft is one of the very few video game franchises where it has a lot more books, comics, manga, and assorted media than the original product ever could. (Tomb Raider was similar for a while, but the assorted media really died there not long after the turn of the millenium, only to return slightly after the reboot.)
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Why do you feel the need to talk down on people who like those games? If they like them then so what? It does not hurt you.
And personally I can see why CoD got so popular. They (at least the ones I've tried, granted last one was MoW 2) were well made games. Not for me, sure, but well made nonetheless. Good sound design, generally good pacing, nice looking, they actually had a story (unlike most FPSs), and it was an alright "action movie" story. The first MoW had a genuinely surprising twist as well (can't speak for the newer entries, as I've not played them).
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CoD originally was nothing more than a mediocre WWII shooter, one of the hundreds that got released every year.
Since then it is a techdemo, like many FPS games are. Looks stunning and has an incredibly exciting single-player campaign (where the plot is almost hilariously dumb sometimes, but this is exactly what we love about dumb action movies, so it is definitely a big plus). And a MP which essentially is just a mashup of UT and CS, but since the usual audience cannot play anything more complex than FFA DMs, it never gets picked up outside the very casual console players.
And yes, it does hurt me, since many of the adverse elements have started to affect other genres. Like holding the player's hand all the time by either being lazy and design all levels as corridors, or using a big, flashing arrow that points to the next destination, to magical self-healing because this way poor little children don't have to use their light little heads to manage health as a resource. Or turning old slow, tactical franchises to just another dime-a-dozen console shooter. "Because it sells."
Thank heaves late last year even devs started to get fed up with all this and now some actual games are being produced outside the indies on PC that are not just another corridor FPS, Uncharted-clone TPS, or the one-millionth hack & slash ARPG. Or some low-grade GTA clone that gets millions of dollars as a budget and commercials and falls flat on its face.
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Like holding the player's hand all the time by either being lazy and design all levels as corridors, or using a big, flashing arrow that points to the next destination, to magical self-healing because this way poor little children don't have to use their light little heads to manage health as a resource.
Some of the things you complain are more down to a shift from one system to another. Health pickups are neither "smarter" nor "more stupid" than regenerating health, they are two design types. One expects you to do a more "pop in pop out" style of gameplay, the other one expects you to move back and collect health pickups after having been in combat for a while. The transition to regenerating health is mainly down to that working better on consoles than the old health pickup system (it means that you don't risk getting completely screwed over because you could not turn fast enough. Turning and looking around is far slower on a gamepad than with a mouse & keyboard). If anything, having a limited, but regenerating, health pool requires a more thought out gameplay style, as you can't face-tank rockets if you know that there are health pickups nearby (and most shooters that use a health pickup system tend to be quite generous with these) CoD neither created this system, nor did it popularize it. The first FPS that used regenerating health is, to my knowledge, Faceball 2000 (released in 1992). The game that made regenerating health standard was Halo (where part of your health would regenerate, while part of your health would not). And do note that Halo was a bit of a turning point for console FPSs. All of the sudden it became one of the main genres, after only having had limited success on consoles (games like Golden Eye would be one of the exceptions). Both systems are in fact really stupid, and encourages reckless playstyles, long live R6 3 ;) (don't take that comment too seriously)
Arrows pointing the way to the next objective and the dumbing down of games due to that, first time I heard that argument was back in 1995. Seems like not much has changed since. I don't remember CoD actually using this though, it was more of a Bioshock thing.
The problem with shooters, if you want the old "Quake" or even "Doom" style is not CoD, it's the fact that they need to be multi-platform releases. And it's not because the playerbase has suddenly become super stupid, it's because of the limitations on those systems.
I'm by the way not buying that the usual player is unable to or even unwhilling to play team games, but just want to stick with FFA DMs. Just look at all the team-based games that are all the rage these days (like MOBAs).
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Even MOBAs tend to turn into mass 1v1s though… :/
Or just a giant clusterfuck where everyone spams like crazy. Although I still consider that an MMORPG thing.
And it's not because the playerbase has suddenly become super stupid, it's because of the limitations on those systems.
And this is another thing I'll never wrap my head around. "Hey, our game cannot be controlled on this system. Let's port it!" FPS games are now using aim assist because of that because controller users wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of a barn if it moved faster than a snail. But when it comes to point 'n' clicks, RTS games, and practically anything controlled by mouse only…
This is why I still like Nintendo. They are not stuck with a 15-yo controller scheme, and thankfully their players aren't whining when not only they move a button somewhere but design brand new controlling mechanics. (Heck, if on anything, I can imagine a mouse-oriented game to run on Wii/WiiU fairly well, especially the latter with the touch screen controls.)
This goes the other way too: I can never understand people buying fighting games like Mortal Kombat (especially MK) or platformers on PC without having a controller. Some genres translate well when the porting studio gives an actual fuck, and even games like the Arkham series and Final Fantasy are easy to use with m+kb if you want… but many are just DOA unless you have a controller.
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Even MOBAs tend to turn into mass 1v1s though… :/
As does CS, among players in the lower skill brackets. (Aka the one I'm in, because I'm absolutely terrible at CS)
And this is another thing I'll never wrap my head around. "Hey, our game cannot be controlled on this system. Let's port it!" FPS games are now using aim assist because of that because controller users wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of a barn if it moved faster than a snail.
Well, the alternative is for them to not port the games, and thus there will be fewer games on PC. And about auto-aim, DOOM was heavy on it, but something that a lot of people (citation needed) don't seem to remember is that the original Quake also did heavy auto-aiming. You could turn it off by digging through console commands, but by default Quake aimed more for you than CoD.
But when it comes to point 'n' clicks, RTS games, and practically anything controlled by mouse only…
Hardly ever see a console release, because while CoD is playable on PC, the handful of console ports of RTSs that were made were not really all that playable. But these genres don't have the same mainstream appeal as shooters, so I guess they figure that only developing for PC makes sense, rather than invent new control systems (of course, we have games like The Walking Dead that was a multi-platform release, and there were a few failed attempts at console RTSs on the last generation, like EndWar)
This goes the other way too: I can never understand people buying fighting games like Mortal Kombat (especially MK) or platformers on PC without having a controller. Some genres translate well when the porting studio gives an actual fuck, and even games like the Arkham series and Final Fantasy are easy to use with m+kb if you want… but many are just DOA unless you have a controller.
Do people actually buy fighting games if they don't have a controller though? No-one I know does that at least.
Platformers do work with a keyboard & mouse though, depending on the control setup. "Abuse style" controls even require you to use a keyboard & mouse. Personally, I use whichever works best for any given game.
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default Quake aimed more for you than CoD.
Yeah, and for the same issue: controls. Quake 1 was controllable without a mouse…
Although, to be frank, despite some of the really nice levels, I always considered id's FPS games more like engine tech demos than actual games. Even Doom is kept alive mostly by the modding scene, and not becuse of its original levels. Quake is used only as online DM platform and not a SP game.
Do people actually buy fighting games if they don't have a controller though?
Yep, they do. Sadly. Especially MK because many still remember the old ones, where you could play with a keyboard only, but not really realising the new ones are way more complicated.
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Blizzard games at least are very good, but one thing about Blizzard games, if you are about to buy Diablo 3 for example, or play WoW, be sure you will play several hundreds of hours at least, if you don't plan that, then don't bother buying them, because it will be waste of money and not cheap.
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there's no better arpg than diablo 2-3, not even path of exile or torchlight matches the quality and content/updates.
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There is no better time sink than Diablo to constantly spend thousand of hours to get better pants or class abilities, more likely. Maybe Borderlands 2, if you prefer first-person mechanics over top-down isometric gameplay. (And if you want your mouse to last years loner by requiring about one hundred thousand less clicking… Seriously, when D3 came out, the way I knew at a café is someone was playing it, was just listening to a noise of constant rapid-clicking…)
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People are dissatisfied with prices but continue to buy.
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probably because of activision, same goes to blizzard (they have their own store so it can't be compared to steam) and ID (i can't believe those old doom/quake titles are around $5 when on sale, they should be like $1 at most -_- ).
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because they want to make best profit of it sincee the franchie has became Cash On Delivery to their pocket ,for some reason my COD ghosts is exception before steam reagion lock for 12$ during sale in RUS store oh i realy miss that time
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Why would you even want to buy these games? They're trash. Except for the old ones. But those can bought at somewhat reasonable prices right now. Although considering how old they are, 10 euro is still pretty expensive.
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Yeah, call me a cheapskate, but 10 euros on sale is still too much for the older titles.
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Even DLC for older (and almost dead) titles cost 7 euro each ON SALE and there are 4 of them (example of BO1). This is how they treat the customers. If you wanted to play dlc zombie maps and you paid 14 euro for one map, now you won't have anyone to play with because it's too expensive. Battlefield 3 on the other hand was in humble bundle for 10 dolars (if I'm correct). This was made to give the game a second life so old players could play with someone (as server were getting emptier with everyday). Same thing was done with L4D2.
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I wanted get CoD1 + UO, CoD2 and MW trilogy but meh too high prices for me.
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So true
I just want to buy cod world at war for singleplayer mode
But for such old game, its so expensive
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Same with Cod 1.. 12 years old game and still only -50%. I want to buy this game but ehm 9.99€ for 12years old game, this is kinda ridiculous
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Yes. However world at war campaign is about 8-12 hours long. http://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=1483
So 12,50€... 12 hours... 1€/1h. :D
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Imagine you're selling potatoes. Customers love them, and come every day to buy them.
Would you lower the price?
Here's your answer. :3
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With the difference is that potatoes have been consumed for centuries, while CoD is a smelly saga which games are pretty od and no one plays them.
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Nope. Call of Duty: Black Ops II currently has over 8,000 players on Steam alone, and reanked in the top 20 played games on Steam.
100 million players as of 13 August 2013.
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Have to admit that from the ones I have played Black Ops 2 is one of the most decents ones.
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Exactly. If people pay, why lower the price. Same goes for DLC.
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because activision is good? :3
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If their old titles, such as CoD 1, CoD 2, CoD 5 (WaW) dropped to max 4-5€ combined, I'd probably pick them :)
but, not gonna happen, so whatever, still got CDs to 1 of them somewhere...
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Yes they are discount resistant. So accepting the fact you have three options; Either give up on them where there are other good similar titles. Or go for Complete Collection or Smaller Steam Subs which will significantly increase the discount. OR go shady unauthorized key seller sites where you can get 85% discounts, which will usually comes with another kind of price.
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I had the 333rd vote for "Yes, they are." O_O
And yes. It seems like they still want to squeeze as much money out of them before dropping the price to below $9.99.
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COD prices NEVER drop to reasonable levels. They are still selling 12 year old games for $10, WHEN they are on sale...
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simple reason: people actualy pay for that.
just go for battlefield :}
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Why are the Call Of Duty games so expensive and why does it take so long for their price to drop at all, let alone become reasonable? No other game series seems to be as resistant to price drops and decent sales as COD. What's that all about, huh? Why can't the regular prices drop to ~15 euros so I could buy those pieces of crap when they're on sale, 90% off the regular price?
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