GAME.co.uk shows MW3 as the most pre ordered game for ps3 and xbox 360 however on PC it is the 7th most pre ordered game, Falling behind titles such as Sims, Battlefield, Deus ex and oblivion. This got me thinking, When I used to play on consoles I used to always play Call of Duty and so did all my friends and when I switched over to PC and finally purchased black ops a while later after release I did'nt find it gripping and played it for 20 hours while I have played BFBC 2 for 100 hours and Terraria for 60 and witcher 2 for 60.
My first reaction to this discovery was that the average age of console gamers is lower than the average age of pc gamers and we all know that younger kids prefer Call of Duty's mindless arcade type of shooter to that offered by battlefield. All of us who have played cod have confronted countless lobbies of trash talking, screaming kids shouting to their mum to bring them breakfast or their K/D will drop or something else just as bad.
While Battlefield gamers especially on PC seem to talk about tactics and other relevant topics. I have yet to run into a PC Game of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with a single screaming kid (Which may be due to the problems of VOIP in the game).
My next thought was the price, Black ops is priced as a console game on PC. It also features DLC at the price of £11.50 making the cost of all three £34 which is around the price of most AAA titles. Most other PC games provide this content for free such as valve games and BFBC 2(excluding the expansion). Call of Duty games also rarely drop in price and still cost the full price years after release for the game and DLC's a thing rarely seen with most PC games.
Pc games are often less "casual" than its console counterparts and PC gamers complain a lot when one of their exclusives is brought to consoles and dumbed down. Call of Duty is as casual as it gets and with more hardcore titles such as Red Orchestra 2 and Battlefield coming out PC gamers don't feel the need for Modern Warfare 3. I'm not saying all console gamers are casual and all PC gamers are hardcore but I am saying that casual gamers have found the consoles as their home and see the PC as something for work and browsing the internet.
The final thing I considered was the advertising of Call of Duty games, The games are aggressively advertised on Xbox live around the time of release of the game or any map packs. The game is also advertised heavily by Microsoft and some retailers on TV mainly showing the Xbox version of the game and sometimes the PS3 version of the game. However PC Gamers have no one front for pc games and advertising and so we go to news sites such as N4G and PC Gamer for our news and so see a lot less Call of Duty advertising and Call of Duty love. The bad points of Call of Duty is also shown more on sites like these.
So what do you think, Why is Call of Duty seventh on pc preorder charts and first on both consoles? Does call of duty even have a home on the PC?
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