Poor reception may end Medal of Honor franchise

After the recent release of its latest first person shooter – Medal of Honor: Warfighter – EA revealed in an earnings call that game has been suffering from disappointing sales. According to GamesIndustry.biz, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Patcher thinks that the bad reception of the game, with many websites giving the game a very low score, brings the future of the Medal of Honor series into question.

"The last iteration of Medal of Honor received an average Metacritic score of 75 in 2010 (after its predecessor received an average score of 73 in 2007), and EA management committed to improving quality with this year's release. Instead, with an average score of only 50, the game is likely to fall short of revenue expectations by $100 million or more. Perhaps more importantly, the poor performance of Medal of Honor makes it highly unlikely that EA can deliver significant digital revenues from DLC subscriptions next year, and sets the company up for a disappointing comparison to the $204 million in digital revenues it expects from Battlefield this year," he noted.

Medal of Honor may have a very murky future

EA had held out from releasing review copies of the game before the launch. One could speculate that this was because the company was well aware of the negative reception that the game would get and wanted to hold out on the review copies untill after the launch of the game. Patcher says, “We were surprised that review codes for the game were not distributed ahead of its release, and regret not seeing this as a red flag."

Written by actual US Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas, Medal of Honor Warfighter is set to deliver this year’s most authentic military shooter experience inspired by real people, real places and real operations. Medal of Honor: Warfighter features genuine international hotspots in the single player campaign and introduces international Tier 1 Operators in multiplayer allowing players to show their national pride online.

One of the biggest features of the multiplayer in Medal of Honor: Warfighter is Fireteams. EA had demonstrated the use of Fireteams in a trailer released back in August. The trailer also shows off more of the multiplayer, which looks like it’ll be filled with explosions all over the maps. The Fireteam system seems to have some things in common with the Battlefield squad system. According to EA, “Your fireteam partner serves as your closest mate on the battlefield. Your fireteam buddy supplies you with ammo and serves as a spawn point, providing a significant strategic advantage.”

Medal of Honor: Warfighter was released recently in India, with the PlayStation 3 version of the game being released later than the other versions due to repeated delays from the distributors.