Most Call of Duty players “not gamers”, says Infinity Ward

Franchise developer explains the strange point of view.

Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward claims that the people most invested in the Call of Duty brand aren’t really gamers, as they won’t touch other games not connected with the franchise. Mark Rubin, the executive producer at IW, was speaking with OXM when he also said that the arrival of next-gen consoles wouldn’t change the Call of Duty audience much.

“Regardless of platform – people’s gaming habits aren’t going to change just because there’s a new platform. We have an enormous amount of players who are more in the casual game space, but they play a lot.

It’s kind of a weird, ironic thing to say; They aren’t hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we’ll take next gen and see how far we can go with it.”

When Activision threw the gauntlet and said GTA developer Rockstar should enjoy their glory while it lasts, and until the release of Ghosts, they sounded very confident. Is Call of Duty’s mostly-non-gamer audience (according to Rubin) enough to surpass GTA V’s numerous records? We’ll see when it releases on November 5 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC, and the next-gen versions will arrive alongside the consoles.