Modern Warfare 2's budget being blamed for MW3's failure

Modern Warfare 2's budget being blamed for MW3's failure
Images via Activision

Written by 

Megan Cooke

Published 

17th Nov 2023 22:00

Since Modern Warfare 3 released, there has been a lot of conversation about what the game could have done better, whether it was rushed, the game’s budget and plenty of other points along that line.

However some people have suggested that the success of Modern Warfare 2, a game with a considerable budget, may be the reason Modern Warfare 3 has fallen so flat.

MW2 had a significant budget with a lot of effort put into multiplayer

A screenshot of Byeong Gyu Park, the Technical Animation Director at Infinity Ward, has been shared on Twitter by user bogorad222.

The post shows that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a significant budget of $250 million put towards it, allowing for focus to be placed on multiplayer modes in order to keep players coming back.

According to the LinkedIn profile, the game quickly made four times this budget back, earning $1 billion within just 10 days of launch.

This, alongside the open critic score of 75%, shows that the money and effort put into Modern Warfare 2, its multiplayer and its campaign was well worth it, and raises the question of what changed in the year between Modern Warfare 2 and the newest Modern Warfare game.

MW3 has disappointed fans of the franchise

Regardless of the effort put into Modern Warfare 2, the newest Call of Duty title does not seem to have taken the praise on board.

Modern Warfare 3 is currently one of the worst rated Call of Duty titles across platforms, and is missing a lot of the highlights from previous instalments.

The single-player campaign is the shortest in the history of the game, multiplayer isn’t as engaging, and it seems as though less effort was put into it overall.

The game was made in a total of 16 months and, while Sledgehammer Games’ studio head, Aaron Halon has denied that the game was rushed, fans have noticed the changes.

While it may seem unfair to compare two games which are so similar in many ways, the differences between the two are so poignant that it is hard not to.

Megan Cooke
About the author
Megan Cooke
Megan is GGRecon's Evening & Weekend News Writer. She has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and is working towards finishing her masters in Journalism. When she isn’t writing about games she can be found reading romance novels or playing cosy games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, APICO, and Disney Dreamlight Valley.
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