Despite being the best-selling game in the US during 2016, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will be looked upon without much in the way of praise going forward. The game got off to a rough PR start, ending up as one of the most hated YouTube trailers of all-time, though it was theorized that it could have been due to a Bot Attack. Regardless, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg thinks that he could have had better foresight when the game was greenlit three years ago.
In speaking with GI.biz, Hirshberg called Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare “clearly one future game too many.”
He continued:
“If I could have had WWII a year earlier, knowing what I know now, then obviously the timing would have been better considering the community culture at the time. But we green light these games three years in advance. We were picking up enough in the feedback loop when green lighting this game, that it might be a good time to return to our roots.”
It’s easy to sit back and play armchair critic when these games are revealed as they are new to us, but for developers and people making decisions, they have to decide on these projects with data they have available to them years before the public ever sees them. Trying to discern what future trends will be is easier said than done, and it’s not as simple as asking fans what they want and going and doing it, as what they want can change on a dime.
Factor in that you have to project what your competition is doing, and it can be an even bigger crapshoot.
Hirshberg continued on why Call of Duty: WWII looks like a good idea:
“When we took Call of Duty to future settings with Black Ops II, that was really good at the time. It added freshness to the franchise, which it needed back then. These pendulums always swing, and so the reception of [WWII] I think, first and foremost, is because it looks great, but also, clearly, it is the right game at the right time.”
Timing is everything, and it’s just as easy to look like a genius as it is to look like an idiot in this industry. Luck clearly plays a big part in that.
Call of Duty: WWII releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 3rd, 2017.
Source: [GI.biz]
