8 Ways Infinite Warfare Is The Beginning Of The End For Call Of Duty

3. Activision Can't Take Any Real Risks

When you're as big as Activision, and Call of Duty is such a big part of gaming/consumer culture as it is, that all but removes any real risk-taking present. Just look at GTA V; its focus on anarchism and free-wheeling insanity courtesy of Trevor was precisely because of how glum GTA IV was.

For Infinite Warfare, yes the idea of fully embracing the direction the past two games were heading in is something of a risk, but Activision are still beholden to sales figures and patterns. Has Call of Duty continued to sell well off the back of its brand name, or the new direction they've gone in?

If they remove the future stuff and backpedal to a more timely, 2000s context, they risk losing all the forward momentum currently built up, whereas to continue down this path only further pushes away the old school fans still purchasing every year for the sake of it.

They're too big not to deliver on the basic stuff, and when there's always a developer working on the followup for the concurrent year (right now 2017's instalment will be well underway), it removes the ability to react to trends, yearly fluctuations and most importantly, fan feedback.

Infinite Warfare is the follow-up to an assumed success Black Ops 3 never had, and by the time next year rolls around, more games in the pipeline will be arriving to fanfares that just aren't there.