Sitting at 9.2 million views, the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare reveal trailer has over 468,000 dislikes, compared to 203,000 likes.
During Activision Blizzard’s earnings call yesterday, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg was asked about all the dislikes on YouTube for Infinite Warfare, saying the same thing happened with Black Ops 2 (the most successful new Call of Duty game when it launched) and pre-orders for Infinite Warfare are already doing well:
On the second part of your question related to Infinite Warfare, first of all you got to love the passion of gamers, this is an industry like no other, and a fan base like no other and we love that our fans treat this franchise like it’s their own and have such strong points of view about it. There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on Earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can and that’s a good thing.
Secondly, of course we know that there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots on the ground style gameplay, and that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new innovative experiences in the game each year and Infinite Warfare is going to deliver that. And the good news is this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping our community together.
And while of course we see the passionate opinions online, we also look at other measurements. And the fact is, while it’s very early, pre-orders are off to a very strong start. Views of the reveal trailer that you referred to are up and, in fact, the number of likes per view on the Infinite Warfare reveal trailer are also the highest we’ve ever seen. We’ve seen this in the franchise before. The reveal trailer for Black Ops II, which took the franchise into the future for the first time, had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time. And that, of course, went on to become our most successful game ever.
And right now, the franchise has never been stronger. We have more people playing Black Ops III, a game that takes place in the future with boost jumps and fictitious weapons and all the rest, than any game in our history. So what we know for sure is that if we always just did what worked in the past and never took any creative risks, we wouldn’t have a franchise. The day to worry is the day we stop trying new things.
Looking at some of the other Call of Duty trailers on YouTube, Black Ops 3 has 79,000 dislikes against 22.7 million views, Advanced Warfare has 50,500 dislikes against 30.8 million views, Ghosts has 19,800 dislikes against 27.2 million views, and Black Ops 2 has 59,600 dislikes against 35 million views.
According to a playlist that tracks the most disliked videos on YouTube, the Infinite Warfare reveal trailer is sitting in 27th overall, just behind Hello by Adele. Baby by Justin Bieber is in first with over six million dislikes.
What do you think of the reveal trailer?
[Source: Eurogamer, Seeking Alpha, YouTube via Forbes]
