Call Of Duty: 9 Biggest Mistakes Activision Want You To Forget

5. Infinite Warfare's Reveal Backlash

Infinite Warfare was dead before it even had a chance to live.

The game was actually a pretty solid entry into the series, boasting one of the better campaigns that actually dared to shake things up with space combat and side-missions. Sadly, most fans wrote it off right from its announcement.

That's partly because IW was a radical new take on the series, one set in space with zero-gravity combat and Jon Snow as the villain. Fans didn't vibe with this new vision, and the trailer was heavily disliked on YouTube, with a ratio of 604k upvotes to a staggering 3.8m downvotes. That's the kind of press you just can't recover from, even if you're Activision.

It was so bad that the next trailer, which showed up at E3 a month later, was purposefully designed to hide the fact that it was Call of Duty. That was better received, but fans were already worried that COD had lost its identity, and this sci-fi trend-chaser didn't help quell those fears.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.