The hit it and quit it model - carpet-bombing the market with sequels and then slashing the assets - pays off big in the short term, so ATVI's shareholders are happy.

Covering all platforms gleans higher initial retail orders and a single marketing campaign efficiently advertises on top of the network effect of a hot brand. Sequels were produced quickly and cheaply. Guitar HeroВ and other former franchises may appear to be publisher failures, but the truth is that strip-mining franchises is a successful, risk-averse strategy. Here's a rundown of the feedback we got from analysts: If treated with care, there's no reason that Call of DutyВ can't last for a long time to come. The analysts IndustryGamersВ spoke with universally agreed that these are two very different situations, and Activision doesn't need to 'learn' from the recent Guitar HeroВ outcome. And while there's always a risk of franchise fatigue for any publisher's big franchise, labeling Call of DutyВ as the next Guitar HeroВ would be a mistake. In the days following the big news, there have been countless opinion pieces online, pointing to the fact that Activision milks its franchises to death, and with the doubling down on Call of Duty, that the heralded shooter franchise is next in line to be given the Guitar HeroВ treatment. Following 14 different SKUs in a little over just two years, Activision finally put the Guitar Hero business to rest. As the plastic peripherals suddenly reached a saturation point and gamers got bored with a feature set in iteration after iteration that failed to really innovate, sales started declining precipitously.

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