Is Activision Blizzard’s main franchise in trouble?

Maybe it’s a case of going to the well too often; when continually tapped, sooner or later that well is bound to go dry.

Activision Blizzard is a publisher that has had great success with many of its franchises. But, through success, the company – like many others – has had a habit of squeezing the life out of the franchises by releasing a game each year until the consumer becomes bored with the recent attempts at the franchise and looks for the new hit game in that genre.

Could Call of Duty be next? With a new Call of Duty game being released each year and switching between the original developer Infinity Ward and Treyarch, does the franchise runs the risk of failing in the future due to Activision’s yearly releases of the game? Maybe.

It certainly happened to the Tony Hawk franchise, which was a huge success in the early years of the franchise. The Tony Hawk Pro Skater Series sold very well and earned praise from both fans and critics. Due to that success, Activision decided to release a new Tony Hawk game every year from 1999 to 2009 and the sales have suffered. Don’t take my word for it; let the numbers do the talking. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 sold 5.3 million units while the new ‘reboot’ Tony Hawk: Ride has sold a disappointing 114,000 units in the US in November; according to the NPD group.

Even Guitar Hero has suffered from yearly releases despite the consumers’ seemingly love affair with the guitar peripheral. But don’t just limit the decline in the music genre to Activision. While the NPD reports that revenue for the Guitar Hero franchise dropped 34 percent in 2009, its main competitor – the Rock Band franchise – dropped 67 percent according to the report.

Every big franchise that releases games yearly is bound to be dethroned at some point – it’s the nature of the business. Along will come a unique war game that will take the genre in fresh directions and even high-profile established franchises like Call of Duty will be forced back to the idea board for innovation. And when that happens, a peripheral bundled with the game probably won’t be the answer.