That was two console generations, 15 years, and 15 Call of Duty sequels ago. “They were selling so many copies of Call of Duty 2 at $60 that the rest of the industry was like, ‘Well, hell, if it’s going to be 60 bucks, let’s go to 60 bucks,’” Piscatella says. Ultimately, the sequel outsold the original. In December 2005, IGN cited NPD data that said 77 percent of Xbox 360 owners had also picked up a copy of Call of Duty 2. The new price wasn’t without its detractors: GameSpot’s review of the Xbox 360 version griped that the game had a “higher price point than its PC counterpart.” But the spike in price didn’t stop consumers, who made Call of Duty 2 the 360’s best-selling launch title. Gamers jumped on board the Call of Duty 2 train too. It took a few months for games to start following, but once they did everyone kind of jumped on board that train.” “ Bobby Kotick came in and said, ‘We’re going to 59 on Call of Duty 2.’ And no one else really followed at first. “That was a big debate, was whether we would go to $59.99 on Call of Duty 2,” he says. Mat Piscatella, who’s now the executive director for games at market research company the NPD Group, was working for Call of Duty publisher Activision when the sequel launched. But when the game made its console debut almost a month later as a launch title for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, it cost $59.99-an industry-altering price. When it launched on PC in late October 2005, the game still sported the standard Triple-A price tag of $49.99. And a tweaked graphics engine enabled then-fancy effects such as smoke grenades, sandstorms, and blizzards.Īlso, the sequel cost more. The game got longer and less linear and featured new squad tactics, chatter, and improved enemy AI.
Regenerating health replaced a finite health bar, and a new icon indicated the positions of active grenades. The 2005 follow-up to Infinity Ward’s franchise-spawning 2003 first-person shooter expanded on the original’s formula in a few different ways. Like a lot of video game sequels, Call of Duty 2 was bigger and better looking than its predecessor.
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