New COD4 playlists axed, no more DLC likely

by Richard Mitchell on Dec 12th 2008 3:15PM

We hope you like Call of Duty 4 just the way it is -- or have moved on to COD: World at War -- because it sounds like it's going to stay that way. Popping into the Xbox.com forums, Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling (known to gamers as fourzerotwo) responded to comments regarding new playlists for COD4 as well as any upcoming DLC. Unfortunately, Bowling announced that the much talked about playlists "never came to fruition." We're not sure when they were shelved, though they had been mentioned by Bowling as recently as September.

On the discussion of DLC, Bowling stated that it was Infinity Ward's goal to ship as many maps on the Call of Duty 4 disc as possible. Bowling stated that the challenge developers face is balancing the number of maps included with a game and the steady release of DLC later. Said Bowling, "If you include [maps] out of box (shipped with game for no extra cost) then it's just ignored and people demand more. If you instead, decide to get the game out and then worry about beefing up the map selection via DLC, people say 'don't nickle and dime me' or 'this should have been included in the shipped game.'"

Bowling then said that Infinity Ward is focusing on expanding its development team to better handle post-launch support for its games while still maintaining enough staff to work on future projects. The upshot of all this: don't expect any more DLC for Call of Duty 4, but expect better post-launch support on Infinity Ward's next project. Whatever that is.

[Via Gamer Limit]

Source

Tags: activision, call-of-duty-4, infinity-ward

Reader Comments (39)

The cynic in me says that Infinite Ward wants to continue to support COD4, but Activision said no because they want COD4's online to die out and people move onto COD: World at War.

I think you are right on the money.

My thoughts exactly. specially since they said they were even testing the playlists and some of then were almost done.

bah!.

man that is so unfair. youre right on the money but its just messed up. I love CoD4, but like every other gamer head I want more maps. More playlists.

So I guess I gotta rough it out with CoDWaW [which is great] but CoD4 is where my heart is.

Oh well, that was expected.
With world at war out they dont need the competition between the same franchise.

Whats that Infinity Ward?

I can't really understand you when you got Activision's hand up your ass.

I'd like to know what do you do when your boss ask you to do something you don't necessarily want do.

Yea, I'm not getting large sums of money to bullshit the general pop. either.

Infinity Ward is owned by Activition. Meaning they have to listen to them otherwise they are out of a job.

I would have payed 10 bucks for more COD4 maps, no question. And I am usually quite stingy with my DLC purchases. This had to be political with Activision since the cod 4 map pack was the highest selling DLC ever or something like that I remember. Obviously another would sell but there has to be behind the scenes politics going on. Oh well. I can wait till MW2.

I feel the same way. Halo is still asking for money with new map packs. Why not release some more DLC? It's money in the same wallet.

Meh. Whatever.

Infinity Ward, you are worthless. The number one played xbox live for quite a while, and no support for it for months and months. Screw you, Infinity Ward. I'll have to think twice about COD6. Also, I hated the World at War beta. It was a COD4 downgrade. So now I don't play any of your games.

you fail at the internet. please quit.

Infinity Ward did not make Call of Duty: World at War

World at War beta is irrelevant, as it was another production from Treyarch, not IW.

About time they axed it. It's not like people will keep playing it. Now, hopefully they'll show more support with CoD 5.

Forcing people to play your new game by a shitty developer doesn't bode well with some people.

I like how people act like IW actually had any choice in this.

You know, worlds most powerful publisher V game developer

Toughy.

With the success of COD4 beating out Halo3 for the top spot on xbox live I really think there should have been more a post release support with more DLC and playlist shuffle's much like bungie did with halo 3, even more frequent double XP weekends would be nice(Are we even going to get any more double Xp weekends??)

The difference is that Bungie hasn't released Halo 4 in the mean time. You can bet the Halo 3 support will dry up mighty quick if that were the case.

This is a pretty clear shot by Activision to cut off COD4 so they can sell more COD:World at War, which is a fine game (the multiplayer is better in many ways), but the inclusion of vehicles is irritating as hell. Vehicles are horrifyingly unbalanced, almost as much as the gunships from COD4.

Dogs > gunships > tanks of death for game balance.

@ Potato

"The difference is that Bungie hasn't released Halo 4 in the mean time. You can bet the Halo 3 support will dry up mighty quick if that were the case."

Well, that should be an indication that the COD developers are milking consumers just like GH. There are a lot of gamers that still enjoy COD4 over COD5. Why not give gamers time to enjoy the game and have fresh playlists and DLC on the horizon? I'm not saying you are siding with them or anything... I'm just saying more is not always better. A COD game every year is getting ridiculous. I'd rather they just focus on one game for a long period of time then be like EA and have a game out every season. I like Bungies plan of a new Halo every 3 years. Halo's graphics are showing it's age against the other titles out this year... but new maps and playlists keep me visiting once in awhile. Wish some of these other companies would see that. It's disappointing to hear news like this.

Infinity Ward to us: it not you, its me.
(then lowers the voice): psst...its them (pointing at activision).

I love COD4, but I've got a bad taste in my mouth from downloading the map pack and then never having them show up on my hard-drive... and never getting a response as to how to actually retrieve them. Pretty lame.

This sounds a lot like EA from 5 years ago. Oh Activision, why must you be so evil now? And why in gods name did I waste money on the COD4 maps?

You would of thought more maps or at least some playlists would of came out. Oh well, thats what happens when your big brother is the bully that likes to steal everyone's lunch money.

WaW just didn't seem like a totally new game to me. If possible, it should of been a 30 dollar expansion or something to COD4.

yeah exactly, its basically re skinned cod4 to ww2 setting, how could anyone expect more?

its a stupid ass idea to try and release a cod every year, ffs we can wait!

political bullcrap!

Yeah. Sucks. Party chat saves the day then activision kills the game.

i guess this means no hardcore domination in the future. shame... i was looking forward to a proper domination mode

i also heard that they were planning to release a patch that prevents guns from firing beyond a set limit, so the noobs that use modded controllers cant cheat the system and get an unfair advantage over people who play the game properly. the amount of people i see with full auto deagles and G3s is just sickening and ruins the game for people that actually play the game the way its ment to be played.

abandoning a game because newer version out is sad, cod4 is the best fps of all time, and not fixing more of the glitches or adding dlc, is a bad move on IW's part, hate me all you want, but when I play the game so many people are unsatisfied by the fact that IW has done nothing with the game since the dlc has been released. no wonder people still flock to halo3, because its ever expanding and things are added on a constant basis. hopefully cod6 has better support and hopefully they listen to the users this time, instead of pushing use aside even after we pay $60 for their game.

I used to feel the same way about the Tom Clancy series(that they wold fix it on the next game) but I finally learned they never would as long as long as the games still sell. I haven't considered a Clancy title since cod4 but I can see the business model they have already established will stick as long as people buy it.

Good way to support your game IW.

let them focus all of their attention to cod6 ?

i'd rather have that be so great my eyes melt than have more dlc for cod4..

and plus there are plenty of other games to keep us occupied till next november:D

I call bullshit on bowling saying if they shipped the maps with the game originally people would of complained that they don't do enough, if that's the case don't charge 10 bucks for when it actually comes out, it would of been free if you shipped it with the game,
also, if you shipped a decent amount of maps to begin with, you wouldn't have this problem and people wouldn't care.

Activition sucks, and the same thing will happen next year... they will not put new content to waw so you buy COD advanced warfare 2

Nothing can replace CoD4 in my heart. :(

You know what? Both Activision and Infinity Ward have dropped the ball BIG time with CoD4. Sure people complain about having to pay money for maps, its human nature to not want to pay extra and want more for free but that doesn't change the fact that a f**kton of people would have bought DLC for it and also more people are likely to buy the game. I remember CoD4's map pack actually set new records for XBL DLC, so why the heck wouldn't they follow it up with another map pack? Do they not like our money?

That being said, the first map pack could have been better quality (i only liked 1 map out of the 3) but needless to say, i got my moneys worth by playing it a ton at least.

There was a huge gap between the release of the only map pack and WaW, they could have fit another in. Not that it matters to me now, i've moved onto WaW, which i'm actually enjoying a lot.

I have friends that play CoD4 still and haven't bought the map pack. They don't want to spend the money, it's not worth it to them. I have other friends that said no to buying the new maps because of the lag issues after host selection was changed and don't play CoD4 at all anymore.

Simply put, DLC has to be profitable. Post production on a game isn't profitable.

I think the reality of the situation is DLC isn't cost effective. If it can't be made during production and released (or finished later) then it costs too much to make.

Even if you use an area from campaign, someone has to go in, change the assets, remove other assets, and then the map has to be tested and balanced. All this costs money.

Look at games like GRAW and RB6. Lots of DLC.. I know a lot of people that had both games (and their sequels) liked them, but didn't buy any of the DLC for them.

New COD4 playlists axed, no more DLC likely

Reader Comments (39)

Posted: Dec 12th 2008 3:26PM lebkin said

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