To make use of official business parlance, Name of Obligation: Vanguard was fairly okay. “The singleplayer has a few nice missions, and the multiplayer has a few respectable modes,” we stated in our 60% review. “However on the entire, Name of Obligation: Vanguard is a warfare we have seen earlier than.”
Apparently, Activision Blizzard feels kind of the identical method. In its recently-released 2021 annual report, the corporate stated that Vanguard did not meet expectations, “primarily attributable to our personal execution.”
“The sport’s World Struggle 2 setting did not resonate with a few of our group and we did not ship as a lot innovation within the premium recreation as we might have like,” the report says. “We’re definitely addressing each of those points with the 2022 launch. Developer on the 2022 premium and Warzone experiences is being led by Activision’s famend Infinity Ward studio. We’re engaged on probably the most formidable plan in Name of Obligation historical past, with over 3,000 folks now engaged on the franchise and a return to the Trendy Warfare setting that delivered our most profitable Name of Obligation title ever.”
Name of Obligation undoubtedly seems to be struggling, at the least compared to the heady days of 2020 and early 2021, following Warzone’s launch. We reported final week that it shed 50 million players up to now 12 months, attributable to a mix of disappointing Vanguard gross sales and “decrease engagement” in Warzone, though we theorized that the live-game battle royale Warzone was seemingly accountable for the majority of the loss.
Nonetheless, it appears clear that Activision is pinning a giant chunk of the blame on Vanguard, and the WW2 setting typically. Which I believe is truthful: Vanguard struggled with plenty of points together with bugs, bad calls, content delays, and geographical confusion as much as and after launch, whereas Activision Blizzard has grappled with allegations of widespead office misconduct allegations that got here to mild earlier than Vanguard was introduced.
However other than all that, the sport itself simply did not appear to set any imaginations on hearth, and the story—a couple of multinational four-person squad searching down “Hitler’s successor,” who by some means presents an existential menace to the world regardless of absolutely the annihilation of Germany within the occasions instantly previous the sport—solely served for example the contortions required to squeeze one thing “new” out of a World Struggle 2 setting.
Activision Blizzard is clearly pinning some very huge hopes on Trendy Warfare 2, the subsequent premium launch within the Name of Obligation sequence, which was officially confirmed last week, appears very completely different. Regardless of the relative letdown of Vanguard, it has good motive to: It is a tough metric, however the Vanguard reveal tweet in August 2021 acquired just a little beneath 34,000 likes; in contrast, the Black Ops – Chilly Struggle reveal tweet in 2020 surpassed 118,000 likes, whereas the Trendy Warfare 2 reveal tweet now stands at over 172,000 likes.
The brand new period of Name of Obligation is coming. #ModernWarfare2 pic.twitter.com/HMtv2S6NlzApril 28, 2022
