Modern Warfare damaged by IW saga

Modern Warfare will live on, it will continue to sell by the bucket load – but both review scores and overall sales will forever be less than they were due to Activision’s legal spat with Infinity Ward, according to Michael Pachter.

I think that it is likely that future games will sell fewer units in the past, primarily due to increased competition from Respawn, DICE and EA games that will likely be in the same or similar genres,” he told Industry Gamers.

That said, I don’t think that Infinity Ward will be devastated, given that they will likely retain three-quarters of their employees, and I think it is highly likely that future games based on the Modern Warfare brand will be successful.

However, it’s likely that the gaming press, which is merciless to begin with, will give future Infinity Ward games lower review scores than in the past, but my expectation is that they will still be high scores overall. And while I think that many consumers will be aware that the ‘creators’ of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare are no longer with Activision, the majority of consumers will either not know or will not care enough to shun future games.”

Pachter added that the way things have unfolded since the fateful day Activision security marched into Infinity Ward’s offices and ousted former owners West and Zampella can’t have come as a huge surprise to Activision.

I think that once that decision was made, the consequences were clear,” he argued. It is hard to imagine that West and Zampella would simply retire, and so it seems to me that Activision should have anticipated that they would plan a competitive product, and would solicit former co-workers to join them.”