Xbox Fans Call Out 'Activision's Greed' Over Call Of Duty Digital Prices

My son is eleven and enjoys the more recent COD games. I owned the first few and he’s played and enjoyed them so I was looking to get some of the early Xbox One COD’s or even Black Ops 3 and 4 but the prices for them, even on sale, are ridiculous. Looks like he’ll just have to stick with the new ones because I refuse to pay what they are asking for five to eight year old games.

Where have these people been the past decade? It's always been like this with digital CoD games and I've even stated this before on this site that CoD games are abnormally expensive compared to other franchises even if they're now over a decade old. Most of the time it's not even worth buying pre-owned copies of the games if you only want to play the 6-7 hour campaign in each game. Some titles are worth it though such as Black Ops 1 and the Modern Warfare games due to how great those campaigns are, but I would never pay that much for a used copy of Call of Duty 3 for example.

Precisely why a system without a physical option is a no go for me. Yes the digital version of a game is in many cases (in my experience, and usually after an extended time period) competitive with a physical copy (mostly in sales) but I can't ever see myself voluntarily opting in to a situation that allows the likes of Activision to exercise the monopolistic option. They clearly feel that the CoD brand is worth a premium, they always have done, I just can't agree with them! I wonder how many actually buy old CoD games digitally? Just those who may be new to gaming and want to experience some of the history? I still can't bring myself to spring for the MW2 Remastered campaign at £20, let alone any of the others.

I was looking at this the other day... At about £16 I was tempted into some blops nostalgia... But that doesn't include the dlc.
Once you add on all the map packs, you're still looking at about £50 for a game where MP is dead (or unplayable due to hackers).

Pricing doesn't make sense for me... Yeah I could buy a disc, but if still be gouged on the extra maps).

A remastered Blops 1+2 pack put out say a reasonable price would do very well... But Activision obviously want to steer people away from the oldies and into Warzone.

CoD has always been this way and while social media will label it "greed", people are clearly paying this. We may not be, but someone is. The price is what people will pay and people do. Apparently... a lot.

Unpopular opinion ahead!

I think the problem is we've all become accustomed to physical media dropping in price as the product ages, that's only because shelf space is premium and they need to put new stock in place.

We are in a digital era and have to adjust that thought process. COD, love it or hate it is a top franchise and Activision has every right to protect their IP and keep it as a 'premium' product. Apple do this, Disney do this.

To be fair, if you put aside the fact that you can buy a used disc for half these sale prices (of course you can, it's a second hand product!) the games are being offered at quite a large discount. They have also been offered at a larger discount in the past, that's when I purchased them.

Now, the issue of the games being full of hackers is absolutely a massive problem. They are selling a premium product, they should offer premium support. The games should be patched.

@JetmanUK "every right to protect their IP and keep it as a 'premium' product."

By this definition, one could conclude that MS does not keep their products "premium" because you can get them through GP and MCC doesn't cost £300.

The people who buy Cod and Nintendo games are the very definition of "consumer", and these companies very well know this, and are happy to take advantage of it.

Lol - whoever posted that needs to stay off the eshop. Games on 3ds and Wii U are still full price all these years later from basically all publishers

@JetmanUK I think the argument that in the digital age the laws of competition, supply, and demand should be discarded and we should embrace monopoly dealer lock and price fixing across the technology industry is the whole complaint though.

If this were any other industry the above would be illegal or regulated, not celebrated. The fact that digital can be run as a monopoly isn't a good thing, and it only exists because governments failed to apply regulation early on in the digital era because they were mostly incompetent fools that didn't even understand it.

@orionreplay My suspicion is that the pricing isn't because tons of people actually buy CoD games at high prices. I'm assuming they keep the prices high to keep it undesirable compared to buying the newest one, which is where they want everyone to be.

If you have an issue with Activision or any other developer (looking at you EA), then buy physical used games like I do for their software. You can often get new releases days or weeks after release and even if you're only paying $5 less than the cost of the new game, those companies see none of your money.

It’s the same with a lot of Nintendo Switch games. Some of the bigger games hardly ever go down in price.

@Richnj I think the problem with comparing Call of Duty games to Nintendo is that the physical prices of Call of Duty drop massively whereas Nintendo games generally don't. Now you could look at this as bad for the consumer but I see it a different way. For example I paid £70 for Advanced Warfare + the MW remaster and £50 for Botw. Now if I was to trade in Advanced Warfare I would be lucky to get a couple of quid whereas Zelda I would get more than half the money back. The preowned market means that you can pretty much get a big chunk of your money back on most first party Nintendo games, same can't be said for other franchises.

@NEStalgia I'm not saying that we should embrace it, it's just an apples and oranges comparison.

Nintendo do this all the time, high prices, both digital and physical, rarely discounted and not by much when they are. They get a free pass, cos Nintendo, Activision don't because they are a scummy company.

I went digital in about 2015 and the benefits, no clutter, no risk of damaged discs, a library with me wherever I log in, game sharing (although I don't currently do that, but others enjoy this feature), no disc swapping, better for the planet, well it's revolutionary.

I think it's a much superior experience and I don't mind paying a premium for it. Physical media isn't gonna be with us forever, times have changed.

Surely everyone on here uses Spotify?! What a great product it is. Of course it's questionable how good it is for the artists.... That's a different matter. Hopefully Gamepass has a fairer business model.

Well, gaming has become a hobby for the masses nowadays, but this is just a reminder that it's actually not a cheap one. Blaming digital games for this is lame. You can't stop progress and just need to deal with this. I almost never buy games at launch. I wait for a 50% discount at least and I still have a backlog. People need to get real and buy what they can afford. Simple as that.

Oh no! Did someone force them to buy the games?!?!?

So far COD MW is the best and only one I want to play, it's not stuck in the snooze fest WW 1 or 2 era and still has plenty of online players. The next BF will then take over from COD I suspect, hmm I may be able to ditch the ridiculous 160GB or whatever it is install size too.

@Richnj I don't see how your Gamepass analogy and my comments actually align tbh.

I'm glad you called out Nintendo though, they are the absolute worst in this aspect.

@Widey85 Well to be fair if you play for example Black Ops on an Xbox One or newer console it is enhanced. Better frame rate, better texture filtering, faster loading, improved native hardware scaling, native video and picture capture, native streaming. So I'd say it's a much much improved experience compared to playing it on the 360.
Granted all this is offered by the console itself rather than Activision themselves, but still true.

Totally agree on the multiplayer issues, they should patch their games, as mentioned in one of my comments too.

They should be on game pass.all of them

I used to enjoy the COD campaigns and would pick them up 2nd hand or in a sale. Not played one for a while simply for this reason, they're too expensive. As for the price of the remastered modern warfare...

Lol wow. Thats why i buy these games for pc.

@John117 This being COD and COD being crap made by a crap company, aside.

Newer doesn't always mean better, and older doesn't always mean no value.

We've just had Quake re-release and people have been loving it. There will be people who enjoy content regardless of age, and that can be people re-experiencing something, or people experiencing it for the first time.

We should encourage people to have explore and experience legacy as well as new.

My belief is that content should be easily and always accessible and affordable. And Xbox and PC are the only ones that come close to that goal.

@JetmanUK “ Activision has every right to protect their IP and keep it as a 'premium' product. Apple do this, Disney do this.”

I’m in total agreement here. If Activision wants to price their games like this, they have every right to do so. I won’t buy it, but if people ARE buying it, why should they drop the price more. I also hardly ever buy Nintendo games anymore, because I don’t think they are worth the $60. That’s why my Switch gathers dust. It’s why my Xbox gets the most use. My PS5 only gets used for exclusives, but I won’t buy a game for $70 until God of War comes out. Looking forward to playing Ratchet and Clank when it hits $40. My point is that they can price it at whatever they want. It’s only priced too high if they aren’t selling units. Don’t like the price, don’t buy at that price.

Nintendo does the same so 😄

The problem is that there's only one digital store on Xbox (or any console) and even on PC there's maybe 3 places to get xbox PC keys. You want to stop this? Demand Xbox be actually pro-consumer and either allow Epic or whomever to have a store on Xbox.

It isn't just an Activision thing, it's a lack of digital marketplace competition.

@RavenWolfe81 Except that logic is thwarted by multiple other popular games getting deep discounts. Ubisoft titles get 50% discounts after only a few months. Capcom has regular deep discount sales on most of its games. LOL at demanding Xbox be "pro-consumer" after offering all of their first party titles day and date for ten bucks a month. A third party store that cuts out the first party platform holder will never happen. Not on Xbox, not on Nintendo, or Sony, or Apple. The only reason it happens on Android is because it's an open platform. So don't hold your breath on that.

@Fulkaffe Nintendo games >>> COD.

Sod the old games take a look at the new games forcing us to buy 2 versions off the game one for last gen and one for next gen why must we pay £70 quid to own 2 versions of the same game I don't own last gen any more so this is pointless and dam right greedy

@XxEvilAshxX Those deep discounts aren't that good compared to PC sales and they're the same price on every console the game's on while usually happening at the same time. Yea, so competitive. Ubisoft competing with themselves, I'm sure they love that.

And Gamepass is nice but it's no more pro-consumer than Netflix with all the same faults. You pay every month/s and it adds up and you have to buy the games when they leave the service. Look at Rockstar putting their games on it and getting people buying dlc/mtx only to remove the game a few months later. Xbox is removing Forza. People will now have to buy them after already paying for however many months to have access.

@RavenWolfe81 Do you not understand what a rental is? That's all Game Pass is. It's a rental service, nothing more. I don't understand why people can't comprehend this. Maybe you're too young to remember Blockbuster and other physical rental stores, but they had the same kinds of promotions, pay a monthly fee and get to rent a game as often as you wanted. Only it was $20 a month and you only got one game at a time, and (obviously) you didn't get to keep it.

Hell, Gamefly is still around and you have to pay a monthly fee AND WAIT FOR THE GAME IN THE MAIL before you even get to play it, and THAT's if you're lucky enough to get a copy when a game comes out and aren't put on the waiting list. THEN, (and this is the kicker) you have to send it back (or purchase it)!

Game Pass is EXTREMELY consumer-friendly. It's just that we're now a bunch of entitled ****s that want everything for nothing.

Which brings me to the "deep discounts" you're comparing on PC, i've bought plenty of games on Xbox for less than $20, sometimes even as low as $6 or $7. How much ****ing cheaper do you want them?