Call of Duty: Vanguard
Game
Documents about Call of Duty: Vanguard
Plus: Back to the Jurassic Forza Era?
Steam is not the whole PC picture, and the early-November 2021 launch slate shows both what the platform's Hype charts capture and what they miss.
- Forza Horizon 5 is the top-hyped upcoming title with approximately 96,000 Steam followers, projecting to reach nearly one million wishlists.
- Jurassic World Evolution 2 is positioned for strong performance, building on the success of its predecessor which achieved nearly two million total sales.
- The indie title Unpacking significantly outperformed expectations, securing over 900 positive reviews shortly after its early November 2021 launch.
Plus: Steam Post-Release Analysis Gets Hype'd
GameDiscoverCo's Plus newsletter introduces a new Steam post-release chart for premium PC and console games, then uses it to assess November 2021 launches.
- The 'Hype to Reality' (HTR) ratio, calculated by comparing pre-release engagement metrics against first-week review totals, provides a benchmark for identifying overperforming and underperforming titles.
- While the median HTR for major Steam releases is 0.16, breakout titles like Inscryption can significantly outperform market expectations with a ratio of 2.34.
- High-profile releases can experience a disconnect between scale and sentiment, as seen with Battlefield 2042, which maintained 100,000 concurrent players despite a 22% positive review score.
Plus: Steam Also - Love Is a Battlefield
This GameDiscoverCo Plus newsletter from mid-November 2021 tracks which new and upcoming PC and console games are performing well, arguing that no low-cost third party analyzes this across multiple platforms.
- Forza Horizon 5 achieved significant commercial success in November 2021, recording over 10,600 reviews and 80,000 concurrent users on Steam during its first week.
- Myth of Empires demonstrated strong market anticipation with 24,000 Steam followers leading up to its release.
- Jurassic World Evolution 2 maintained high player engagement levels despite receiving mixed critical feedback regarding its gameplay progression systems.
Deep Dive: Exo One's Road to Success
Exo One, Jay Weston's largely solo-developed planetary flyover game, launched November 18, 2021 on PC, Xbox, and Game Pass, and serves as a case study in building pre-launch demand without ad spend.
- Exo One achieved commercial success through a multi-channel strategy, generating over $500,000 in initial Steam revenue and an estimated $300,000 to $600,000 from a Game Pass deal.
- The game reached 100,000 wishlists prior to its November 2021 launch by leveraging viral TikTok content and participating in three Steam Next Fests.
- A standalone Steam prologue functioned as a permanent discovery tool, contributing to a Hype to Reality ratio of 0.51, which is more than triple the median for large November launches.
Activision Restores Its Logo in Call of Duty Marketing After Previously Omitting It
Activision published a multiplayer reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Vanguard on September 8, 2021, and this time the end slate carries the publisher's logo.
- The Italian antitrust regulator (AGCM) has launched an investigation into Activision Blizzard regarding potential consumer protection violations in 'Diablo Immortal' and 'Call of Duty: Mobile'.
- Regulators are scrutinizing the games for 'dark patterns' in UI design, specifically questioning the transparency of in-game currency costs and the use of notifications to pressure players into limited-time purchases.
- The investigation includes an assessment of parental control systems, with concerns that default settings may insufficiently protect minors from excessive spending, unlimited playtime, and unmonitored social interactions.
No Single Player in Battlefield 2042
Sparkers' June 2021 blog post examines the announcement that EA's Battlefield 2042 will be the first Battlefield title without a single player story mode, and asks whether this signals a broader decline of the campaign in first person shooters.
- Battlefield 2042 is the first entry in the franchise to launch without a single-player story mode.
- Historical sales data for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, which also lacked a single-player campaign, shows it performed competitively against subsequent titles like Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War in six tracked European territories.
- Despite the commercial viability of multiplayer-only models, major publishers like Activision have continued to include single-player campaigns in recent Call of Duty releases.
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.