I guess you can only blame MS for this, everyone knows CoD drops in November.  Releasing Halo4 in November is bound to fail from day 1.  Blops2 is going to be massive, everyone is pissed at IW for the trash that MW3 was and will flock to the new CoD.

I just feel like chiming in here;

I don't want the series to fail myself but I would like to see these developers pushed out their comfort zones and be driven to do new things. They keep churning out the same piece of work with increasingly silly stories and lack of new tech and innovation and a few new locations (some are simply lifted from previous iterations though). The sound is bad, the gameplay shallow and unoriginal, the stories are straight out of a Seagal movie and the whole thing has grown stale.

How about doing something new? This won't happen as long as the CoD series keeps breaking records and doing so well. Its kinda sad really, especially Infinity Ward have shown that they are masters at the craft when they want to (Call of Duty 1 and 2 and Modern Warfare), so to see them hit the "repeat" button year after year is truly sad for those who used to enjoy their work.

I have to question, have you seen the interviews and read about Black Ops 2? They are introducing branching storylines/sandbox gameplay this time around, multiple endings, new strike force missions in campaign where you choose which mission you want to do and depending what you chose to do and how you do in them the overall outcome of the story changes, you are also able to take full control and play the game from any perspective in these missions, so you no longer have to be the foot soldier pushed down the corridor you can switch up to an overwatch position and control your squad like an RTS or drive any vehicle you see on the groud or fly jets around while with full control. Also if your squad dies that changes the outcome of the story, they don't just miraculously come back to life in the next checkpoint.

And this is all just singleplayer. They are adding in new modes in zombies besides the round based mode as well as what seems to be 8 player co-op as opposed to the traditional 4 player. Multiplayer has yet to have any detail revealed but Treyarch have said that they are building MP from ground up and will introduce new ideas as well as new weapons/killstreaks that are applicable to the future time setting.

I don't know about you, but to me it seems they are definitely innovating and taking the series into directions it has never gone before.

I enjoyed the campaign of the first Bad Company titles, as it reminded me some of MASH in its humor.  I had so hoped they went that way.  But then Bad Company 2 decided to go the Call of Duty route which made little sense for the characters in the original Bad Company and were entangled with mercenaries in the original.

I'll be interested to see how this factors in with the Wii U version....

That is what I saw also, and being able to go RTS piqued my interest also.  It sounds cool to me.  Does it make it more like Battlefield?  If so, why are they upset?  Why not fork off half of the Call of Duty franchise and go more open ended?  I did like what they did with it.  Let Black Ops keep jumping the shark every time, and Modern Warfare remain true to the formula.  Why would people complain?  Heck, just keep playing the older versions if you don't like the direction the new ones head.  Anyone say they can't do that?

As far as Treyarch goes, I found Call of Duty 3 to be real disappointing, but have been happy with them ever since.  I think they went over the top with the original Black Ops with the modes.  How can I dislike them for giving me Bots, Zork (yes it is in there) and a Zombies version of Smash TV?  There was also Kennedy and Nixon fighting Zombies also.  I felt, even if people hated the original campaign in Black Ops, they others more than made up for it.  It is a keeper for me personally.

Is Black Ops 2 coming out for Wii U?  I am think the ability to command the battlefield gets real interesting using the Wii U controller.  Add to an FPS RTS type controls and it does get real interesting to me.

I'm really not all that shocked. lol

Really? I didn't know they had done interviews yet. The changes sound good, but I'm not going to be excited for this game until I actually see the changes with my own eyes. The launch trailer has still put me off, the setting and storyline seem ridiculous and the graphics and style of the game haven't changed at all, even Call of Duty 4 looked better in my opinion.

From what I saw in one interview, they are doing speculative sci-fi about the future, and trying to make a what-if plausible.  They also want to make the main enemy more credible.  It piques my interest.

All that being said, I believe Call of Duty 4, the first Modern Warfare, had one of the best single player stories in any FPS ever, as far as execution, pacing and credibility.  They went bat crazy with MW2 single player.  Even Black Ops was nuts.  MW3 was ok in my book, considering how bat crazy then went with MW2.  Rest of the stuff is worth it though, I though, with the Spec Ops and other mods cool, as far as I am concerned.