Back by popular demand, the November 2013 release of COD: Ghosts brought enormous revenue and some insight to big brother industry.

Another year, another Call of Duty. On November 5th 2013, Acitivision saw it’s game fly off the shelves generating just under $500 milion in sales on two out of three major platforms (PS4 release coming November 22nd 2013). The famous first-person-shooter (FPS) franchise has released at least one new game each year for the past 10 years since their launch in 2003. I myself am guilty of spending one complete month (yes they have an in-game time monitor) playing my first Call of Duty game: Modern Warfare 2 in 2010. Activision has reported the new game based off the fictional operations of a U.S special task force sold to retailers before the release to rake in over $1 billion. With numbers like those I couldn’t see any reason why publishers like Activision could even help themselves from having annual releases like these. In addition, loyal customers to the series waste no time or expense making sure they get their hands on a copy of the game as soon as humanly possible despite it’s increasingly expensive price-tag (around $80 for some platforms). What interests me about this report is that it represents an industry where customers have no hesitation in buying products despite frequent releases of extremely similar products for more money. Many people criticize Apple for withholding technology from their new products in order to cash in from many different releases. What’s so different between the iPhone and Call of Duty? Now I know yes the two products are at very different price points and are targeted at different markets, but essentially their release patterns are the same. It’s a fact that companies are advancing into new technologies for their products far faster than they can turn around, test, develop, and implement them into a usable product. Due to my extensive playing of at least three different COD games, I can say with absolute conviction that there is almost no difference whatsoever between each new game. You have a gun, you vitrtally shoot the gun. Maybe maps, players, and special weapons vary but it’s significantly less of a difference than Apple product to Apple product. Nonetheless, people and articles like these are everywhere condemning Apple for their use of an intelligent business strategy.