Black Ops 4 Is 2018's New Call Of Duty; Early Release Date Set

@Attitude2000:

"I was going to ask if anyone had an idea why October and not November. This seems like as good a reason as any except Activision doesn't seem to fear anybody when it comes to Call of Duty's release date."

Activision doesn't fear losing the CoD franchise yet, it's still a strong multi-million seller on an annual basis. At this point, it won't be another game that kills CoD, CoD will kill itself.

But that doesn't mean Acitivision doesn't see EA as a threat. EA has been directly challenging the CoD franchise since John Riccitiello squared Battlefield 2 against the CoD franchise, and EA releasing their AAA shooters a week or two before a CoD game every since.

EA has thrown more than just the Batttlefield franchise at CoD. But when that wasn't enough, they rebooted the Medal of Honor franchise as an infantry-only competitive shooter that wanted to take the shooter crowd away from CoD. 2 games later and Medal of Honor was canned again. When CoD was having one of its weaker years with Infinite Warfare, EA released Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 1-2 weeks right before the launch of Infinite Warfare. CoD still sold millions that year, but the quality of that entry tied with consumers having 2 AAA competitive shooters before CoD that year definitely ate into some of Activision's sales.

Should Activision fear losing the CoD franchise to EA's franchises? Probably not. But that doesn't mean EA isn't spending millions to try to take that audience away from Activision, and that's something Activision is mindful of.

@gamingdevil800:

"Nah Red Dead Redemption 2 is the real threat."

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a threat just as much as any other AAA game is a threat. During that time for holiday shopping, the competition is always fierce every year. That's the only audience similarity that Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 has: they're both AAA games.

A large portion of people who will buy Red Dead Redemption 2 won't buy Black Ops 4. Even taking the samples in the GameSpot comments section, a lot of people who are picking up Red Dead Redemption 2 aren't getting Black Ops 4 when they launch. People have already made up their minds on this before Black Ops 4 was announced, so it's not exactly the same core audience.

Activision faces much more competition on an almost yearly basis from EA than they do from Rockstar. Activision also isn't very worried about losing their competitive shooter audience to a single player focused game in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Will Red Dead Redemption 2 eat into some of the sales of Black Ops 4? Sure, but not enough for it make a major impact on Black Ops 4 sales. And the impact of Red Dead Redemption 2 won't make competitive shooter fans not buy Black Ops 4 or the CoD franchise in general.

EA stands a much bigger threat. EA has publicly challenged Activision on sales of their shooter franchises almost annually. EA tried it with the Medal of Honor reboot that released before CoD, then they tossed out Titanfall 2 to die a week after launching Battlefield 1; all 1-2 weeks before CoD: Infinite Warfare. EA has literally thrown millions of dollars to directly dethrown CoD and take away their core shooter audience.