10 Video Game Franchises That Drastically Reinvented Themselves
7. Call Of Duty
Released in 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took the world by storm, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide, and earning numerous Game of the Year awards in the process. Today, the franchise is a powerhouse, a commercial juggernaut that shows no signs of slowing down, only continuing to grow in popularity with each new generation of players.
With that being said, the success of the series can be attributed almost entirely to this fourth main instalment, which relocated the action from WWII to modern times, reinventing the franchise into one of the most lucrative of all time. Besides the setting, the game defined modern online gaming, emphasising multiplayer more so than any previous instalment in the series, and setting the standard in the process.
Did it work?
Modern Warfare began a trend in modern military shooters that hasn’t yet subsided, reinventing not only itself, but the entire FPS genre, for better or worse.
To put its incredible success into some kind of perspective: Modern Warfare outsold all previous entries combined, and has since spawned numerous sequels and spin-offs, all of which have achieved a considerable amount of success themselves.