Some developers were not intimidated by the famous franchise and were ready to compete for the attention of players.
While some developers pushed back their releases from Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim team decided to release alongside Modern Warfare 3 (2011) — despite being predicted to fail.
Pete Hines, former head of marketing at Bethesda, shared his memories in a recent interview with dbltap — the approach to choosing release dates was challenged even during the time of Oblivion, but even then they managed to succeed:
«If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that \"Morrowind would never work on Xbox\"….or \"Oh, Skyrim won't survive competing with Call of Duty\", \"Everyone will play Call of Duty. Nobody will buy your game.\"
And I just said: \"I understand it's a big brand, but their game isn't better. I'll stand against them. I'll spend [marketing money] against these guys. I'll never spend nearly as much [as they do], and I can still win.\"
We were told not to release Oblivion in May. \"Nobody releases games in the spring, it will never work\". But we ended up doing great».
Call of Duty Modern Warfare was released on November 8, 2011 — a few days before Skyrim. Nevertheless, Bethesda's game not only \"did not fail\", but is still popular today and is actively supported by the mod community.
