Medal of Honor is no more, at least for the moment. During a financial call picked up by Eurogamer last night, EA's chief operating officer Peter Moore called time on the resurrected franchise in light of "well below expectations" sales of the recent Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
There was scope for a parting shock at reviewers, however. "Critics were polarized and gave the game scores which were, frankly, lower than it deserved," Moore observed. "This one is behind us now. We are taking Medal of Honor out of the rotation and have a plan to bring year-over-year continuity to our shooter offerings."
(Here's our Warfighter review so you can see what he's talking about.)
According to the pair, EA's failure to meet net revenue projections of $1.25 to $1.35 billion for the last quarter is entirely the fault of Warfighter (the publisher pulled in $1.18 billion in the end). The bigger picture for EA is reasonably bright - net revenue for 2012 was $1.65 billion, and the company's spring portfolio promises to perform well.
This month's Dead Space 3 demo has been seen 44 per cent more downloads than Dead Space 2's demo, EA noted, and Crysis 3 pre-orders are apparently 40 per cent higher than those of Crysis 2. Alas, Insomniac's Fuse has now been delayed into the second quarter of calendar 2013.
Do you mourn the passing of Medal of Honor? Somehow, I suspect the makers of Serious Sam 3: BFE don't.
5 comments so far...
Bezza89 on 31 Jan '13 said:
Good news everyone!
No, seriously it is, if there's anything more annoying than BF3 trying to cannibalise the CoD market it's EA putting the two year rotation cycle to make MoH fight treyarch, it is silly business as MoH was always going to get seen as comparatively ship even if it wasn't. As long as Danger Close are still working this is only good news - maybe MoH will go back to being a ww2 spy like in the original games. Or maybe they'll have a new ip to work on. Either way, they wont have to be compared to CoD, which will help their market share.
Now, EA are still going to want a two year rotation cycle game for Nov release, is it respawn? Bad Company? Didn't they just buy homefront too lol? Don't forget EA always have new IP somewhere, and we might actually get great games pumped out, rather than FPS we might see an RPGy shooter taking it's place - the success of borderlands and fallout can't be ignored...
Like the proffessor said... good news!
Baryonyx on 31 Jan '13 said:
I've not played Warfighter, but the previous MOH game was a bit lacklustre. I did enjoy the campaign, though it was nothing to write home about, and the multiplayer was dismal. And that is a game pitched directly against whichever COD offering is doing the rounds at the time. Against a poor COD like MW2 it would have stood a better chance.
The last time I really enjoyed a Medal of Honor game was Underground!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/58/Medal_of_Honor_-_Underground_Coverart.png/256px-Medal_of_Honor_-_Underground_Coverart.png
Bezza89 on 31 Jan '13 said:
Underground was amazing! Frontline was also good though.
Decent_Jam on 31 Jan '13 said:
Frontline was my favourite, I forget what the one after that was, but that one (on Gamecube) was OK too, and I seem to remember Rising Sun being meh.
I have fond memories of MOH but that's all, I've moved on really,
Will be interesting to see what fills the void, Mirror's Edge 2 perhaps? (stop dribbling Ed)
The Holczanator on 2 Feb '13 said:
medal of honor was good back in the day but it has been going down hill for years now its great that it got pullled because they could focus on makeing it a better game agan