10 Crucial Video Games That Saved Dying Franchises

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.