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How Microsoft Can Fix Call of Duty and Why It Might Happen


Vanguard promo
Credit: Activision

Call of Duty has been a gaming giant for decades, but the franchise is in desperate need of a reboot. The games are too expensive, too incomplete, too broken, and far too monetized, any fan would tell you. Nonetheless, gamers love Call of Duty. It's a franchise that changed first-person shooters forever, and many, many gamers have beloved memories of playing classics like Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.

The good news is in: Microsoft is buying Activision-Blizzard, so Call of Duty can actually be saved. In this article, we'll tell you how and why this is possible in four simple steps.

The First Step: No More Yearly Releases

Warzone promo
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Credit: Activision

Since the dawn of man, there's been a Call of Duty every November. Milennia ago when humans were still hunter-gatherers, every fall still brought with it shorter days, cooler temperatures, and a new Call of Duty to try out back at the cave. It's time this stopped.

It's long since been recognized in the gaming community that yearly releases turn franchises stale, inhibit innovation, and frustrate playerbases. The only reason a Ubisoft or an Activision-Blizzard try to pump out new games as fast as possible is money. People will usually buy them, even if they won't be happy about it.

Related: Is Call of Duty: Vanguard Zombies Good?

They do this not just because of capitalism, exactly, but because of that and the fact that these companies are purely gaming companies. They don't sell consoles or have vibrant, profitable other wings of their business. They just have games.

This means that there isn't a great financial incentive for them to take a loss by working harder and longer on an individual project when they could just release it, take people's money, and then take some more through microtransactions and battle passes.

Microsoft is a very different company. Microsoft wants people to buy Xboxes, and Microsoft desperately wants people to sign up for Games Pass on either Xbox or PC. If Microsoft can get you to buy into their ecosystem and guarantee them money each month, they stand to make much more money than they could by simply making a single game as expensive as possible.

Related: How to Fix Call of Duty: Vanguard Connection Issues, Crashing Problems, and Matchmaking Glitches

So, it's in Microsoft's interest to make Call of Duty fans, which comprise millions of gamers, as happy as possible, and with the consensus overwhelmingly being that there are too many games with too many microtransactions, an end to yearly releases is certainly possible.

The Second Step: Remove SBMM

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Credit: Activision

Skill-based matchmaking, or SBMM, needs to be deleted. Just purge the code from the servers, set up a simple matchmaking system based on ping, and give players a competitive ELO-based Call of Duty League mode for players that want to compete against similarly-skilled opponents.

This is how most games work, and there can still be some matchmaking adjustments the system makes on the fly as you queue that players wouldn't mind. For example, if you're a new player, maybe you get matched with other new players for a time.

Related: How to Fix Call of Duty: Vanguard Connection Issues, Crashing Problems, and Matchmaking Glitches

Call of Duty fans just don't like SBMM, and Call of Duty outside of competitive modes balanced specifically for competition is a casual game, so don't force players to sweat if they don't want to sweat. But still give players the option to sweat against similarly-skilled opponents if they want. It's really that simple.

SBMM itself only exists to keep players gaming for longer by making them feel successful enough to not want to quit with just enough losses to make players think that if they just bought the right weapon blueprint from the store, they'd dominate their enemies. Microsoft doesn't need to try to make money this way.

The Third Step: Make Call of Duty Developers Collaborate

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Credit: Activision

Each of the three main Call of Duty developers, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, are known far and wide by gamers for excelling in a particular aspect of game development. Instead of having each studio develop an entire game, let each studio work on what they're best at.

Related: Call of Duty's Anti-Cheat Ricochet in Warzone and Vanguard Explained

Infinity Ward does amazing work when it comes to building an engine, designing campaigns, and getting basic gunplay right. Treyarch makes great Zombie modes, knows how to create good maps, and can balance multiplayer well. Sledgehammer is a great support studio known for listening to the community and incorporating feedback.

Let Infinity Ward build the engine, make the campaign, and figure out the basic gunplay. Let Treyarch do Zombies, design the maps, and balance the multiplayer. And have Sledgehammer support both studios and handle the game's live service elements.

Yes, this will take more time to develop than a single game by a single studio, and it means yearly releases won't be possible anymore. But as previously discussed, this is a necessary change for the franchise, and it's actually in Microsoft's best interest to drive up engagement rather than short-term profit.

Related: The Controversy of Skill-Based Matchmaking, or SBMM, in Call of Duty Explained

The Fourth Step: Make Call of Duty Free-to-Play

Warzone promo
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Credit: Activision

Ending yearly releases is one thing, but if you truly wanted Call of Duty to modernize and have a traditional multiplayer package that actually competes with the biggest shooters out there like Halo, Battlefield, or Valorant, the series would go free-to-play.

Warzone has been the most successful Call of Duty project since the classics in the franchise which themselves made much less money than Warzone does now. Why not spin-off the Call of Duty multiplayer experience and Call of Duty Zombies experience into standalone free-to-play games that you package with Warzone and simply call Call of Duty?

Take the basic mechanics of Modern Warfare 2019 in terms of movement and gunplay, load in a huge variety of old and new maps and modes, and add new content each year driven by what the community is most interested in.

Related: Why Is SBMM, or Skill-Based Matchmaking, in Call of Duty?

Fans tired of the modern setting? Release a bunch of futuristic maps in a new playlist. Fans sick of traditional Zombie maps? Add in a new mode that gives players the option to try out the Zombies formula in a new format.

Microsoft can still sell microtransaction skins and be able to charge for battle passes, because if the game's free, the updates are free, it won't be replaced every year, and you can grind out cool stuff to use in-game if you play enough, players won't mind spending a few bucks here and there over the months and years.

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