10 Crucial Video Games That Saved Dying Franchises
It's easy to forget, Call of Duty was on life support before Modern Warfare.
There are many reasons why a given franchise might finally collapse under the weight of its own success. For the most part, people demand innovation, and even the most diehard of fans will abandon a franchise that demonstrates an inability to evolve or mature meaningfully with the times.
In the rarest of occasions however, a certain game will come along at a crucial time, and salvage an otherwise dying franchise. It will shake up the formula, and reinvent the mechanics from the ground up, revitalising the series for a whole new generation of players. On these occasions, a franchise can be snatched back from the clutches of oblivion, and given a second chance to redeem itself in the hearts and minds of its most loyal fans.
Here are 10 games that saved dying franchises from themselves…
10. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty wasn't always a sales juggernaut of the video game industry. In fact, prior to the release of Modern Warfare, the series was often outperformed by rivalling franchises, such as Medal of Honour.
Released in 2007 for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, Modern Warfare took the world by storm, earning multiple game of the year awards, and selling over fifteen million copies worldwide. To put it in perspective: Call of Duty 4 outperformed all previous entries in the series combined, and has since gone on to spawn countless sequels and spin-offs. By comparison, Medal of Honour: Warfighter was a commercial failure, and arguably killed that particular franchise, raising a very important question: Would Call of Duty be alive today, had it not shifted direction and reinvented itself?
As a testament to the game’s continued popularity, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered was recently announced by Activision, and has quickly become more of a talking point that Infinite Warfare. In fact, the legacy of the game is such that the remastered version will probably outperform more recent entries in the franchise, such as Advanced Warfare and Blacks Ops III.