Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has upset its fair share of gamers – or YouTube viewers, depending on how you look at it – with the initial trailer reveal. The trailer itself has 421,012 dislikes, nearly double the number of likes, but Activision isn’t panicking one bit.
In fact, in its recent quarterly earnings report during a call with investors, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg offered a multi-faceted response as to why these dislikes don’t spell doom for Infinite Warfare.
“First of all, you’ve gotta love the passion of gamers. This is an industry like no other, and a fan base like no other, and we love that our fans treat this franchise like it’s their own and has such strong points of view about it. There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on Earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can. That’s a good thing.
“Secondly, of course we know that there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots-on-the-ground style gameplay, and that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new, innovative experiences in the game each year, and Infinite Warfare delivers that. And the good news is, this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping our community together.
“And while of course we see the passionate opinions online, we also look at other measurements and the fact is, while it’s very early, preorders are off to a very strong start, views of the reveal trailer you referred to are up, and in fact the number of likes-per-view on the Infinite Warfare reveal trailer are also the highest we’ve ever seen.”
By the way, the last time the community hated a reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, it went on to become the most successful title in the series. “We’ve seen this in the franchise before; the reveal trailer for Black Ops II, which took the franchise into the future for the first time, had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time, and that of course went on to become our most successful game ever.
“And right now, the franchise has never been stronger. We have more people playing Black Ops 3–a game that takes place in the future with boost jumps and futuristic weapons and all the rest–than any game in our history. So what we know for sure is that if we always just did what worked in the past and never took any creative risks, we wouldn’t have a franchise. The day to worry is the day we stop trying new things.”
That being said, if those dislikes do translate into direct consumer numbers, then Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare may at least not do as well as Black Ops 3. That really depends on how many people want to play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remastered (which is unfortunately all of us). We’ll find out how it all shakes down on November 4th 2016.