CoD: IW Free weekend 15-20 Dec '16

[StrickenBiged]

Activision have announced that we'll be able to try CoD: Infinite Warfare for free between 15 and 20 December 2016. 

The video does not mention platforms, but Activision have confirmed to Eurogamer that PS4 and XBOne are included. 

Players will be able to try out slices from all 3 modes of the game.

Discuss below whether this reeks of desperation, or whether we are seeing the return of the demo.

[BIOHAZARD-R-US]

Considering that it's been reported that sales are down ~50% to what Black Ops III was at this exact time last year, and that player base is down ~67% compared to Black Ops III at this exact time last year, I'd say it's a desperation move. Never before has a CoD title done this, and most free trails for games are for a weekend. Saturday and Sunday only. This is 5 frikkin days.

[Bullstomp]

21 minutes ago, BIOHAZARD-R-US said:

Considering that it's been reported that sales are down ~50% to what Black Ops III was at this exact time last year, and that player base is down ~67% compared to Black Ops III at this exact time last year, I'd say it's a desperation move. Never before has a CoD title done this, and most free trails for games are for a weekend. Saturday and Sunday only. This is 5 frikkin days.

Exactly. When it comes to Call of Duty, Activision has never done free. Heck their DLCs consist of 4 MP maps and they charge $15! For any other franchise gamers would be screaming bloody murder.

Personally I have completely lost interest . . .even at "free".

 

[DARKB1KE]

What muscle-bound gun-toting steroid user guy do I get to play this time in COD? 

[StrickenBiged]

7 minutes ago, Bullstomp said:

Personally I have completely lost interest . . .even at "free".

This is where I'm at, tbh. But then some good reviews of the IW campaign have me second guessing myself and I'm wondering if I shouldn't give it a chance... 

But then I have so much to play right now, that I probably won't bother. 

[DuckSwimmer]

This just shows how bad this game is.. I personally love COD, but I find this game unplayable and I just can't tolerate it. The zombies are fun though.

[Terra]

This confirms that Call of Duty is starting to die off. Battlefield 1 probably acquired former COD fans. 

[thegirlruka]

The sci-fi shooter genre is a little oversaturated. Making Infinite Warfare "Call of Duty: In Spaaace" was probably a bad move with Destiny, Overwatch, Star Wars Battlefront and their own Black Ops III also being relatively popular. They'd probably do better if the yearly releases at least had different settings again (like how Modern Warfare was more modern realistic fiction and Black Ops was either historical fiction or sci-fi.)

The last link on the article links to a reason as to why the game might not be selling too well. This other article makes a note about not forking out full price when people know it'll be cheaper in a few weeks is also a valid point. With the multiplayer being relatively poor for a Call of Duty game (at least in my opinion from playing the beta,) there's no real reason to pay full price. The single player aspects will still be as strong as they can be when the game can be bought from a used game shop for $10.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Urushiro

[EternalChaos72]

When i seen the same article on my news feed on Facebook i knew right away it reeked of desperation, the sales were down 50% or something? I stopped playing this franchise at Advanced Warfare because of the glitched collectable trophies and the exo-skeleton trophies also glitched on me. I was discouraged to go back to the franchise after that. I wonder is people actually wising up to not getting the same shit each year. There is better shooters out there. Killzone and Battlefield for example. Killzone being my favourite FPS. 

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

I saw this earlier but didn't know if it was worth making a thing about. The game has hit as low as 35 new here, for comparison, Blops 3 is still around 60/70 at it's cheapest, and there's the notorious "trade in game X and you'll get it for a dollar" thing too. Now this, wonder how long until Acti regrets keeping MW locked away?

I bought IW for 69 at the midnight launch, I got my hands on the MW code through other means (may or may not have bought, used, and returned), and for 70 bucks, the package is a pretty good deal.

 

But honestly, I got Titanfall 2 for 36 the other week (another game going for cheap) and it's shitting all over even my beloved MW. I swear, Titanfall 2 (and 1, I've been playing the shit out of both lately) is everything future CoD should have been but isn't. It's honestly fantastic and, I'm not exaggerating here, it's the most fun I've had in a multiplayer shooter since Quake 3. Obviously the whole Modern Warfare era of 2007 to 2012 or so was hot shit, but Titanfall takes that to a whole new level and it makes sense it's by a lot of the same guys behind MW 1 and 2, it feels like the next logical step for the series, far more innovative than AW and Blops 3 ever were.

[DPJUST14]

16 hours ago, BIOHAZARD-R-US said:

Considering that it's been reported that sales are down ~50% to what Black Ops III was at this exact time last year, and that player base is down ~67% compared to Black Ops III at this exact time last year, I'd say it's a desperation move. Never before has a CoD title done this, and most free trails for games are for a weekend. Saturday and Sunday only. This is 5 frikkin days.

Well, to be fair, only the physical media sales were down by ~50℅, but the digital sales actually rose (Especially on PS4, I'm assuming, but this is just speculation on my part), so, if anything, this is an indicator of the increase in prevalence of digital media in videogames, given that we're talking about a sales behemoth like COD, who always delivered tons and tons of physical copies of their games every end-of-the-year season (which overall sales are probably low compared to other years, but still). This info is in the same Eurogamer article that some of you are referencing, so I was puzzled to see this interesting bit of info missing.

15 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

This is where I'm at, tbh. But then some good reviews of the IW campaign have me second guessing myself and I'm wondering if I shouldn't give it a chance... 

But then I have so much to play right now, that I probably won't bother. 

I'm (almost) right there with you, mate. I also have an ever-raising backlog, increased by the E3/Gamescom/Black Friday deals, and I'm quite sure it'll only get bigger on Christmas, but that isn't a problem by itself (I can always play the game regardless of trophies/backlog), the biggest drawback for me is that, in order to play the free week, you need to download the whole game, which weights about 60GB. So, for me it'll take at least a full day to download, so I'd lose a day of playtime in the best case scenario, and, what is more, in this free week, the campaign progress is capped to the 2nd. mission, the MP level progress is capped at level 15 and Zombies is capped at level (wait for it)... 3!!! I sincerely don't understand why the Level caps are so restricting for a 5-day trial (For Example, I reached Level 3 in BO3 Zombies in, like, 10 minutes, and prestiged in little more than a day), given that they want people to experience the gameplay and progression experience across all game modes, the level caps should be more generous (like MP Level 40, or even 55, Zombies level 30 and 5 campaign missions) to give people a goal to aim for, to really decide if they want to go the extra mile and buy the game or not.

A shame, really. I'm a big fan of COD: Zombies (especially from Treyarch) since the first time I accidentally found the game mode while playing my first-ever Call of Duty, Black Ops 2, in 2012, so I was looking forward to play Infinity Ward's take on Zombies (Zombies in Spaceland), which looked fun and interesting to me in this free week. But, as I said, the cons overweight the pros in this offer. I'm still interested to see what Infinity Ward can do to innovate with Zombies in the upcoming DLC season for Infinite Warfare, though.

Edited December 14, 2016 by DPJUST14
Grammar Correcting.

[Galactic Hyper Balls]

I  know why they called it Infinite Warfare because there IW, Infinity Ward

might have to try the free weekend since I'm not buying it, unless it gets really cheap just for COD 4

[StrickenBiged]

14 minutes ago, DPJUST14 said:

I'm (almost) right there with you, mate. I also have an ever-raising backlog, increased by the E3/Gamescom/Black Friday deals, and I'm quite sure it'll only get bigger on Christmas, but that isn't a problem by itself (I can always play the game regardless of trophies/backlog), the biggest drawback for me is that, in order to play the free week, you need to download the whole game, which weights about 60GB. So, for me it'll take at least a full day to download, so I'd lose a day of playtime in the best case scenario, and, what is more, in this free week, the campaign progress is capped to the 2nd. mission, the MP level progress is capped at level 15 and Zombies is capped at level (wait for it)... 3!!! I sincerely don't understand why the Level caps are so restricting for a 5-day trial (For Example, I reached Level 3 in BO3 Zombies in, like, 10 minutes, and prestiged in little more than a day), given that they want people to experience the gameplay and progression experience across all game modes, the level caps should be more generous (like MP Level 40, or even 55, Zombies level 30 and 5 campaign missions) to give people a goal to aim for, to really decide if they want to go the extra mile and buy the game or not.

A shame, really. I'm a big fan of COD: Zombies (especially from Treyarch) since the first time I accidentally found the game mode while playing my first-ever Call of Duty, Black Ops 2, in 2012, so I was looking forward to play Infinity Ward's take on Zombies, Zombies in Spaceland, which looked fun and interesting to me in this free week. But, as I said, the cons overweight the pros in this offer. I'm still interested to see what Infinity Ward can do to innovate with Zombies in the upcoming DLC season for Infinite Warfare, though.

A good point re download size. I'm sure that they've decided to set it up that way so that any impulse purchasers will be encouraged - "I've played two missions and already downloaded it, what the hell, I'll buy it". 

Thanks for the details on what exactly will be included in the free weekend. 

I never got into the Zombie mode myself. Only tried the first one in CoD: WaW, and wasn't a fan. I far preferred the Special Ops from CoD: MW2 when it came to my CoD flavoured co-op.  

[BIOHAZARD-R-US]

5 hours ago, DPJUST14 said:

Well, to be fair, only the physical media sales were down by ~50℅, but the digital sales actually rose (Especially on PS4, I'm assuming, but this is just speculation on my part), so, if anything, this is an indicator of the increase in prevalence of digital media in videogames, given that we're talking about a sales behemoth like COD, who always delivered tons and tons of physical copies of their games every end-of-the-year season (which overall sales are probably low compared to other years, but still). This info is in the same Eurogamer article that some of you are referencing, so I was puzzled to see this interesting bit of info missing.

I did see that they were saying that digital sales were up and only the physical sales were down, but the reason why I myself, at least, did not mention that part, is because if that really is true, it doesn't help the game at all since the player base compared to Black Ops III this time last year is down ~67%. That's too massive of a percentage to say it's only cause the lack of physical sales, and that percentage should be lower if digital sales were at a significantly increased level

[DPJUST14]

12 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

A good point re download size. I'm sure that they've decided to set it up that way so that any impulse purchasers will be encouraged - "I've played two missions and already downloaded it, what the hell, I'll buy it". 

Thanks for the details on what exactly will be included in the free weekend. 

I never got into the Zombie mode myself. Only tried the first one in CoD: WaW, and wasn't a fan. I far preferred the Special Ops from CoD: MW2 when it came to my CoD flavoured co-op.  

Yeah, I hear you, mate. I´m a big Resident Evil fan myself since I was a child (I´m 21 now), so learning that there was a Zombies mode in a game like Call of Duty was quite strange, but I really enjoyed the mode and the story that Treyarch made across 4 games (World at War and the Black Ops Trilogy), although I didn´t really like the ending that Jason Blundell made for Revelations (it felt quite abrupt and didn´t answer many of the questions that the fans had since the beginning of the story), which caused qute a meltdown on Reddit. That said, I also love myself some Co-Op FPS action. Extinction from COD: Ghosts, in my opinion, was a quite nice change for the Co-Op survival/Zombies third modes that we used to recieve in COD, and the progression and class system was pretty good (although not without it´s flaws), and COD: Advanced Warfare´s Exo-Survival was quite good, too (The Flip Flop trophy on PS3 was quite hard for me to pull off in solo, luckily one of my brothers helped me. It was fun.). I´ve never tried Exo.Zombies in AW, though, as the first map came with the first DLC, Havoc, so I couldn´t try it, but I get why some people said the mode was tacked onto game to draw DLC sales because people were expecting the next Treyarch game after Ghosts, but ATVI switched to a 3-year development cycle with Sledgehammer Games, which was pushing it´s own Exo-Survival, so people were somewhat dissapointed (I was a little bit upset, too). That´s maybe why SHGames never added the DLC maps to the Exo-Survival rotation after DLC1, because they instead focused in what people seemed to want: more Zombies. Quite a shame, really. Exo-Survival could have benefited from some new maps and features.

 

7 hours ago, BIOHAZARD-R-US said:

I did see that they were saying that digital sales were up and only the physical sales were down, but the reason why I myself, at least, did not mention that part, is because if that really is true, it doesn't help the game at all since the player base compared to Black Ops III this time last year is down ~67%. That's too massive of a percentage to say it's only cause the lack of physical sales, and that percentage should be lower if digital sales were at a significantly increased level

Fair enough. Don´t get me wrong, though. I also think that, despite COD still selling like hot cakes (especially on the end-of-the-year season), their overall sales are on the low compared to what many people consider the highest point in COD sales history: the MW3-BO2 era (that is, 2011 to 2013), especially given the huge amounts of hate that the Future-based CODs get on the internet (although It´s also known that Internet hate/dislike doesn´t always traduce into lower sales of a given game),and, most importantly, some stagnation/market fatigue on the FPS genre and the Triple-A games sector in general.

Check this interesting article (also from Eurogamer UK) which covers this market phenomenon in more detail, and gives solid arguments to try to explain this situation:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-11-30-why-i-think-big-console-game-sales-are-down

[BIOHAZARD-R-US]

I know it's a slightly different topic in a sense, but Modern Warfare Remastered's new update has added Supply Drops to the game, which further proves that Infinite Warfare has sold poorly, since they're attempting to make more money off of MWR via Supply Drops, which are virtually 100% profit.