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Serious Question: Does CoD:MW2 (2009) make more money by spending half as much on marketing? This is the most lopsided example near the top of the list by far

Serious Question: Does CoD:MW2 (2009) make more money by spending half as much on marketing? This is the most lopsided example near the top of the list by far. Is it accurate? 80% of budget to marketing? This is one of the biggest problems with the global economy today as I perceive it (I don't claim any expertise). Companies spending more money telling me how good their product is, instead of spending it on making a good product. I understand why, to some extent, but 80% is a whole lotta nothing!

polishdude20 4y ago
In a way you can think of it like this: Do I spend money to make the thing marginally better for people who would probably already buy it? Or would I spend more money so more people hear about it and buy it? Once a product I have works to some reasonable standard, I would love to have a bigger audience that knows about it.
- trey-jones 4y ago
  Of course you would, as a producer/seller. But for consumers it's terrible. My perception is that "some reasonable standard" has just gotten lower and lower. Corners are cut on quality of personnel, including training, as well as component materials. And the consumers lose. Partly because for many consumers price is the most important factor in purchase decisions, and partly because there is so much marketing (including misinformation and disinformation) from every direction that consumers can't have much of a hope of making informed decisions anyway.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Games seem consistently far far better than what we had before. Not only from tech improvements, but budget allocated for building the product is higher than ever before.
    - trey-jones 4y ago
      I guess that's your opinion. I'm not seeing the same thing though. And how must it feel as a dev on a game when marketing gets 4x your budget?
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
etempleton 4y ago
MW2 was an absolute phenomenon. It is what made Call of Duty what it is today. I was in college when both MW 1 and 2 came out. I knew no one else that had the first MW, but literally every single friend of mine had MW2. Was this inevitable or was it the marketing? I think they knew they had a hit on their hands and spent the money to make it a phenomenon. It paid off.
- hajile 4y ago
  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the best selling game of 2007 and sold over 16M copies. All the future games were just derivatives of what was a fairly genre-defining game. The game’s campaign is generally regarded as the best the series ever had. It moved away from the very popular world war or sci-fi games that dominated while striking close to home for the post-9/11 generations of gamers who were impacted by the ramped-up wars going on in the Middle East. The multiplayer for the rest of the series was especially derivative of cod4 as it has basically been a few extra weapons and exorbitant “win more” kill streaks.
  - etempleton 4y ago
    And MW2 and the next few iterations sold nearly double that amount selling close to 30m each. It is fair to say MW2 is when it reached the height of relevance. And while MW was a revelation the multiplayer was perfected in MW2(MW1 had map balance issues). MW2 also introduced the underrated Spec Ops co-op mode.
    - hajile 4y ago
      Statistica puts CoD 4 at 20M units, MW2 at 25M units, and MW3 at 31M units [0]. You must also consider the environment. 2009 was a FPS deadzone. There was MW2, World at War, Resident Evil 5, Left 4 Dead 2, and Borderlands. 2007 had a TON of superb titles including CoD 4, Halo 3, Crysis, Bioshock, Half Life 2/TF2/Portal (Orange Box), S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Quake Wars, and probably a couple I'm forgetting. Given that difference, MW2 sales being just 20% higher is not that great. The worst aspect of console CoD 4 and MW2 was grenade spam and the second worst issue was win more killstreaks. Both of these vastly outran any map issues. The only bad map I can recall was the one with all the shipping containers, but that was because it was miniscule. I used to play a LOT of hardcore search and destroy (with perk, grenade launcher, and killstreak limits -- yay custom PC servers). I don't remember any situation where having fast reflexes wasn't by far the most important thing along with hitting the max FPS (140 FPS?) so you could jump farther (I can't remember if this was fixed in MW2). Maybe it was different for other people though. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/321374/global-all-time-unit-sales-call-of-duty-games/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/321374/global-all-time-u...
wodenokoto 4y ago
Super Mario for the NES is listed as 0.8 mill for dev and 25 mill for marketing.

polishdude20 4y ago

In a way you can think of it like this: Do I spend money to make the thing marginally better for people who would probably already buy it? Or would I spend more money so more people hear about it and buy it? Once a product I have works to some reasonable standard, I would love to have a bigger audience that knows about it.

trey-jones 4y ago
Of course you would, as a producer/seller. But for consumers it's terrible. My perception is that "some reasonable standard" has just gotten lower and lower. Corners are cut on quality of personnel, including training, as well as component materials. And the consumers lose. Partly because for many consumers price is the most important factor in purchase decisions, and partly because there is so much marketing (including misinformation and disinformation) from every direction that consumers can't have much of a hope of making informed decisions anyway.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Games seem consistently far far better than what we had before. Not only from tech improvements, but budget allocated for building the product is higher than ever before.
  - trey-jones 4y ago
    I guess that's your opinion. I'm not seeing the same thing though. And how must it feel as a dev on a game when marketing gets 4x your budget?

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

etempleton 4y ago

MW2 was an absolute phenomenon. It is what made Call of Duty what it is today. I was in college when both MW 1 and 2 came out. I knew no one else that had the first MW, but literally every single friend of mine had MW2. Was this inevitable or was it the marketing? I think they knew they had a hit on their hands and spent the money to make it a phenomenon. It paid off.

hajile 4y ago
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the best selling game of 2007 and sold over 16M copies. All the future games were just derivatives of what was a fairly genre-defining game. The game’s campaign is generally regarded as the best the series ever had. It moved away from the very popular world war or sci-fi games that dominated while striking close to home for the post-9/11 generations of gamers who were impacted by the ramped-up wars going on in the Middle East. The multiplayer for the rest of the series was especially derivative of cod4 as it has basically been a few extra weapons and exorbitant “win more” kill streaks.
- etempleton 4y ago
  And MW2 and the next few iterations sold nearly double that amount selling close to 30m each. It is fair to say MW2 is when it reached the height of relevance. And while MW was a revelation the multiplayer was perfected in MW2(MW1 had map balance issues). MW2 also introduced the underrated Spec Ops co-op mode.
  - hajile 4y ago
    Statistica puts CoD 4 at 20M units, MW2 at 25M units, and MW3 at 31M units [0]. You must also consider the environment. 2009 was a FPS deadzone. There was MW2, World at War, Resident Evil 5, Left 4 Dead 2, and Borderlands. 2007 had a TON of superb titles including CoD 4, Halo 3, Crysis, Bioshock, Half Life 2/TF2/Portal (Orange Box), S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Quake Wars, and probably a couple I'm forgetting. Given that difference, MW2 sales being just 20% higher is not that great. The worst aspect of console CoD 4 and MW2 was grenade spam and the second worst issue was win more killstreaks. Both of these vastly outran any map issues. The only bad map I can recall was the one with all the shipping containers, but that was because it was miniscule. I used to play a LOT of hardcore search and destroy (with perk, grenade launcher, and killstreak limits -- yay custom PC servers). I don't remember any situation where having fast reflexes wasn't by far the most important thing along with hitting the max FPS (140 FPS?) so you could jump farther (I can't remember if this was fixed in MW2). Maybe it was different for other people though. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/321374/global-all-time-unit-sales-call-of-duty-games/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/321374/global-all-time-u...

wodenokoto 4y ago

Super Mario for the NES is listed as 0.8 mill for dev and 25 mill for marketing.