Call of Duty has dominated the sales chart for the past six years, but as the series’ popularity is inevitably starting to dip, EA has aggressively marketed Battlefield 4 as a better alternative for FPS fans.
While it remains to be seen whether EA will finally make good on their continued efforts to best Activision’s sales as the Call of Duty: Ghosts release nears and BF4 makes its way onto store shelves, given the track record of so-called “Call of Duty Killers” the odds might not necessarily be in their favour.
Here are 5 other “CoD killers” that failed their mission. Scroll through the gallery below to view them.
5 "Call of Duty Killers" That Failed Their Mission
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Medal of Honor
EA touted Medal of Honor as the next big FPS on the market in 2010, and as such it swiftly found itself in direction competition with Call of Duty: Black Ops.
However, whereas Black Ops received mostly positive reviews and swiftly became one of the best-selling games of all time, Medal of Honor was poorly received and its multiplayer component failed to gain a dedicated following.
Its sequel, 2012's Medal of Honor: Advanced Warfighter, was even worse, so much so that EA pulled the series out of rotation.
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Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3 was, perhaps unwisely, marketed directly against 2011's Modern Warfare 3.
While it was arguably the better game, it's nigh-on impossible for an FPS to compete with Call of Duty's sales, and the amount of bravado publishers EA and developer DICE swaggered in with was shot down when, once again, the latest CoD game topped sales charts worldwide. It was a ballsy approach on behalf of BF3's creators, but one that ultimately left them a little red-faced.
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Homefront
Homefront wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a particularly great one either, and a military shooter needs to be more than just "good" to topple the behemoth that is Call of Duty.
Set in a slightly silly near-future North Korea, Homefront racked up an impressive 1 million sales in its opening week, before swiftly slumping into obscurity.
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Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Battlefield 3's predecessor gave us our first inclination that EA was trying to directly compete with Activision, as they quickly responded to the announcement that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 wouldn't feature dedicated servers by informing gamers that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 would.
The game was very well-received both commercially and critically, but considering it released when the popularity of the CoD series was arguably at its peak, it still failed to topple it.
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Crysis 2
The sequel to a PC classic, there was plenty of hype placed behind Crysis 2 prior to its release. It was released to a positive critical reaction and sold tremendously well, with EA shipping 3 million units in 4 months of its release.
However, despite it having a fun and frantic multiplayer component, it still failed to capture the attention of the majority of the gaming community
