Back when I imagined the COD experience on the Vita, I had never expected them to try and deliver an orginal game to system and personaly I never thought they  should. The success of the franchcise simply comes down to the multiplayer, something which many people play consistantly through many months after the title has been released. If the multiplayer experience is king, then why try and compete with it, and why not give the players an extension of  the experience they'll be playing months later on their consoles. In my opinion they should have just ported the multiplayer component from Black Ops 2, more or less ignored the campaign and used that time to craft one or 2 Vita exclusive (timed exclusive) Maps/weapons, which can be downloaded onto your console, provided you have the Vita version, otherwise it'll availble as comercial DLC a few months later. This game should then be sold at a slightly disscounted price, but its activision so anything less then $40/£30  is probably unrealistic. This would also mean that the Vita version is garunteed the same quality of the console counter part in terms of gameplay and at least a similar quality in terms of design and graphical presentation.

But yeah, I'm usually always in support of unique spinoffs as opposed to ports, but If the games main component is multiplayer and  the multiplayer community is likely to be thriving at the time of the handheld versions release then I think ports are the way to go. Thats not to say unique content isn't welcome, unique content is always welcome! :)

Am I the only person who thinks this?

I think a zombies only spin off could of been awesome, and considering how popular the mode is in BO and will be in BO2 it could of done really well.

A direct port would have to compete directly with BO2 though. Being unique encourages purchasing both, especially with potential tied in storylines. Sony isn't implementing Cross Buy because consumers tend to buy both home and handheld versions of games, it's because they don't and they will probably get more sales for offering the free handheld version.

With that said it should have been a zombie game like Andrespetmonkey, including a zombie story line, over the top and funny with CoD gameplay, multiplayer, and brand to sell it. As of right now the game may be good or it may not, but as a more typical entry into the series it might have some trouble attracting home console gamers away from its big brother. Though with the bundle coming out, gamers and parents alike might see CoD and bite.

I think the only way a direct port would have been a success is if you would be able to play online with Vita against your friends on their PS3, and vice versa. But I just don't think its technically possible to do something like that this generation. So since multiplayer is where its at in CoD land, that would be, essentially, the greatest thing to ever happen to the series - to be able to continue playing online against your buddies w/ consoles, even while you're on the road.  And all of the DLC and saved info from your PS3 gets clouded over to the your Vita for a seamless transition.  Hopefully some day there can be a more universal PSN that can do such a thing. In the meantime, Vita remains pretty unnecessary as far as core gaming goes.

I think it should be a spin off but a well made one. People don't rush out to buy ports for anything. Ports are just there for people who see benefit in them. I agree if you like the system bring on the ports.

There are plenty of games that do that. In regards to Call of Duty they would have to work on it themselves to have cross platform multiplayer. Now there could be some difficulty in dealing with large matches, but those could remain PS3 exclusive while Vita keeps the smaller modes. I'm not sure what the limitations are but I'd venture to guess the main difficulties would be balancing fairness between the two consoles, tweaking controls, and on the user side wireless connection speeds. As for Resistance Burning Skies multiplayer...that game was most likely trampled on by their Call of Duty project. Will Declassified have a full multiplayer experience, not sure. Nihilistic is closing now so there is the worry they didn't polish things despite cutting corners with Resistance or maybe it is just Nihilistic, I would hope Activision would require standards for their title, we will find out soon.

Somehow this game would of been better off as a port of black ops, this game should of been like the assassin's creed or uncharted game for vita. A spin off which captures the console experience well, while adding enough unique gameplay elements to show off what the vita is capable of. Cod vita just seemed to be lazily developed adding little to black ops

Call of Duty Vita should have not been given to Nihilistic. I mean come on Sony this was supposed to be a system seller and you (or Activision idk who it was) gave it to Nihilistic?!. Look at Killzone Mercenaries and then look at Cod Vita. What were you thinking?

Vita can't run the more mid-range-to-high-end PS3 engines without serious sacrifices anyway.

To "directly" port the game you'd have to cut the frame rate to 30 fps or lower and scale back geometry/graphical effects IMO.

Like Uncharted is probably the best looking Vita game so far, but it's definitely a big step down from Uncharted 2/3.

NFS: Most wanted is getting a direct port. The only sacrifice? Less traffic (and obviously resolution, but it's of course a much smaller screen and thus looks as sharp at lower resolutions). I would call that "mid-range" though... I bet we'll get stuff comparable to Uncharted 2 by the end of its lifecycle, seeing as Uncharted: GA, a launch title, is comparable to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.