People have cancelled their preorders for “Call of Duty Modern Warfare” because of game-mode exclusivity that favors the Playstation Four.
People have shown great distaste for the upcoming game in the “Call of Duty” series, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” after the reveal of a standard gameplay mode on Sept. 17: Special Ops Survival Mode. It is a co-op survival horde mode where people fight waves of enemies with friends. What was people’s problem with it? It was advertised as exclusive to PlayStation Four for the first year it comes out.
While the statistics of how many people have not been confirmed, it appears that the number of people who canceled their preorders due to this decision was significant enough to get a response from some of the developers involved in the game’s creation. The game’s own director said that this decision was above his pay grade. This implies that this is a decision that came from someone quite high up. Don’t believe that this director speaks only sense, however. When people continued to ask question after question about the game’s cut content, he began to support the decision with bizarre reasons. He said that this is “much better than others I’ve seen,” implying that because we have seen worse the exclusivity here is completely reasonable. He also said that this one particular mode is only a tiny fraction of the whole game and that it’s not an impactful part of the experience.
This argument suggests that this portion of content is so tiny; it doesn’t even matter that you will not get to play it. If that’s the case, why not release it for everyone at the same time? If the portion is truly that small, then there really shouldn’t be an issue with releasing with everything else. These arguments about how little is actually cut away from everyone else avoids the real question of why. Why is this portion cut away for a literal year for everyone who didn’t want to buy a particular console? The answer is obvious: money.
And it gets worse. While the director can mouth off about how little content is actually cut from everyone else, it ignores one of the staple facts about the “Call of Duty” series.
The “Call of Duty” series is an annual series. They have made promises like this in the past where previous “Call of Duty” games came packaged with the promise that the game would be supported for years to come. However, those promises become extremely hollow when you remember that this series will simply pump a new one out at the same time next year.
This exclusivity deal, plus the worrisome discussion with the director of the game, makes this the perfect example of why preordering a game may become problematic. Features might be implemented or taken out as the development of the game comes to the finish line. Or, issues that have yet to be discovered are found literal hours after the game’s official launch. There is an ever popular solution to all of the issues that come from preorders: wait.
Wait for more information to come out and give their opinions on the pros and cons of the game. Give the game a chance to reveal its true colors to those who were given the time to analyze the game, rather than quickly glance at it.
However, there are undoubtedly still many who pre-order such games. With that said, we have no clue whether there is still time for this decision to be revoked. Declarations of the removal of exclusivity can still happen, considering the time frame that they have to do so. The game itself will release on Oct. 25 of this year. While they may no longer have the choice to revoke their decision, there is no doubt that this has had, and will most likely have, a negative impact on sales.
Edward Park is a second-year student majoring in English education. EP909756@wcupa.edu