8 Reasons The Video Game Industry Is Headed For Disaster (Again)
4. Unrealistic Expectations
The Call of Duty franchise will celebrate its sixteenth birthday in 2019, no mean feat for any long-running franchise, let alone one that continues to guzzle up cash like there's no tomorrow. Treyarch's latest addition to the illustrious series, Black Ops 4, notched up an eye-watering $500 million within three days of launch, comfortably securing the military shooter's future for years to come, right?
That's a negative, according to Activision's investors. Following the news break, share prices in the publisher continued their freefall, implying that investors weren't impressed with a single video game generating revenue in excess of half a billion dollars, believing it should have made more. To put into perspective how ridiculous that is, Avengers: Infinity War's record-breaking opening weekend gross in the US pulled in $258 domestically and $640 million globally.
Placing the blame on Activision isn't entirely fair, mind. Square Enix, EA and Capcom have all been guilty of the very same practice with the likes of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 7, both games that, despite attracting overwhelmingly positive receptions, fell short of expectations.
Please, folks, stop expecting sequels to your most popular IPs to outperform what came before based on arbitrary projections.