Is COD a console thing?
GAME.co.uk shows MW3 as the most pre ordered game for ps3 and xbox 360 however on PC it is the 7th most pre ordered game, Falling behind titles such as Sims, Battlefield, Deus ex and oblivion. This got me thinking, When I used to play on consoles I used to always play Call of Duty and so did all my friends and when I switched over to PC and finally purchased black ops a while later after release I did'nt find it gripping and played it for 20 hours while I have played BFBC 2 for 100 hours and Terraria for 60 and witcher 2 for 60.
My first reaction to this discovery was that the average age of console gamers is lower than the average age of pc gamers and we all know that younger kids prefer Call of Duty's mindless arcade type of shooter to that offered by battlefield. All of us who have played cod have confronted countless lobbies of trash talking, screaming kids shouting to their mum to bring them breakfast or their K/D will drop or something else just as bad.
While Battlefield gamers especially on PC seem to talk about tactics and other relevant topics. I have yet to run into a PC Game of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with a single screaming kid (Which may be due to the problems of VOIP in the game).
My next thought was the price, Black ops is priced as a console game on PC. It also features DLC at the price of £11.50 making the cost of all three £34 which is around the price of most AAA titles. Most other PC games provide this content for free such as valve games and BFBC 2(excluding the expansion). Call of Duty games also rarely drop in price and still cost the full price years after release for the game and DLC's a thing rarely seen with most PC games.
Pc games are often less "casual" than its console counterparts and PC gamers complain a lot when one of their exclusives is brought to consoles and dumbed down. Call of Duty is as casual as it gets and with more hardcore titles such as Red Orchestra 2 and Battlefield coming out PC gamers don't feel the need for Modern Warfare 3. I'm not saying all console gamers are casual and all PC gamers are hardcore but I am saying that casual gamers have found the consoles as their home and see the PC as something for work and browsing the internet.
The final thing I considered was the advertising of Call of Duty games, The games are aggressively advertised on Xbox live around the time of release of the game or any map packs. The game is also advertised heavily by Microsoft and some retailers on TV mainly showing the Xbox version of the game and sometimes the PS3 version of the game. However PC Gamers have no one front for pc games and advertising and so we go to news sites such as N4G and PC Gamer for our news and so see a lot less Call of Duty advertising and Call of Duty love. The bad points of Call of Duty is also shown more on sites like these.
So what do you think, Why is Call of Duty seventh on pc preorder charts and first on both consoles? Does call of duty even have a home on the PC?
It's become so mainstream that practically everyone that owns a gaming system owns at least one Call of Duty game. So Activision have just pushed it on consoles because that's where the primary COD demographic is (12-25 year olds).
PC Gamers typically expect more for their money than the yearly COD game tends to deliver so we tend to put our money elsewhere.
I'm not sure whether or not you're aiming at "consoles ruining hardcore series", but I don't think your statement I quoted seems to be the case. CoD4 was the ultimate turning point for the series getting more popular than Halo, and I doubt you'll find the majority say Call of Duty is better than Call of Duty 4.
You can't tell me those initial CoD expansions were better than today's CoD either-taking when they were released into account.
is easily the best in the series so his arguement is a fail
I still attribute the massive decline in the COD series to the departure of Grant Collier, one of the former heads of Infinity Ward. He left after COD4.
Although I don't care to argue this further (since this is fairly subjective), but can you describe what "still had a heavy focus on PC" means?
I contend that the "heavy focus on PC" was lost after CoD's expansion pack made by IW, which was for the better imo.
It had stuff like leaning, and dedicated servers, and good mod support, and support for up to 55+ players in games.
MW2 was a console game, as it had none of these features.
I'm beginning to feel your aim to just rephrasing a term like "before the series became bad" to "when the series become less of a PC series", and then say one has to do with the other. Looking empirically at the CoD series, it's safe to say the CoD series became more of a console series after United Offensive. I guess that's tough for PC elitists to handle (don't want to assume you are, mind you) b/c most will agree that one of the CoD's after UO is the best in the series.
Exact same could have been said about MW2 and Black Ops, MW2 especially after being hit with the boycott, but both games ended up being top seller on Steam for months and till this day they have been the most played game on steam top10 with BFBC2, the supposed superious product, trailing behind them. Note: The steam stats is just an example that people do buy the games despite what pre-order numbers and people online say. BFBC2 for example is higher rated on Xfire game hour stats.
And no, it's not really a console thing. The console community is simply much larger than the PC gaming community because they are more mainstream. COD games are still better on the PC and the skill level if you excluse the hacking and etc. is much better. You get a much stasfying feeling and better quality games on PC than console.
TLDR: At the end of the day pre-order numbers don't say much. Lots of people despite saying won't buy it on the PC, will buy and it will most likely end up being a top selling/played game on steam.