Halo remains the king right now, but Call of Duty will overtake it soon. Who knows, maybe Killzone will be up there some day.

When I wrote my article for the site, this was the most controversial piece. I called Call of Duty 4 the Halo Killer. I stand by that statement, and I'll address the points as to why. Some of these were previously mentioned by others in this thread.

1. COD4 has outsold Halo 3 across all of it's available platforms, and by quite a few million. It has been played by more gamers. It is thus a bigger game. We don't even know the PC sales for the game, but I can venture a guess they at least match the PS3 sales, if not surpass them.

2. The argument that Halo 3 would have sold more if multiplatform is flawed. Halo 3 was a system seller for Xbox 360. Had it been multiplatform, it's advertising budget would have been miniscule to what it ended up as under Microsoft's wing. Give me one third party publisher that would have marketed the game as strenuous as MS did. Done racking your brain? No answer huh? That's because there isn't one. Even COD4 didn't have that kind of advertising budget, so Activision is out of the question. Halo being a high end, well marketed, well made piece of software adds to it's prestige, ad taking that from it, along with it's massive advertising budget would only hurt or at best match it's current sales, but would hardly surpass them.

3. As previously mentioned, COD sells well as a yearly release, with two seperate teams alternating years. Halo takes approximately 3 years to make with one team. Any way you shake it, COD can pull in more sales and profit with the way it's being handled. There is always the possibility of a backlash over time, ala Tony Hawk, or a general spiraling interest in shooters, but things look pretty rosy on the horizon for the series. There is no evidence to insinuate that there is a declining interest in the series. Look at World at War. It's the bastard step child of the series and is performing remarkably well across it's platforms.

4. Halo 3 was purchased off of pre-release hype. It had front loaded sales and then decent legs going down the stretch. It functioned exactly as a well marketed, desireable product should. COD4 was purchased off of good word of mouth. It had a significantly lower opening, all platforms included, and went on to outsell Halo 3 by a lot. This was done because of player to player recommendations. There is proof in player numbers also. COD4 was played online more than Halo 3 for quite a few months, even with less sales.

5. This is more of a question but imagine if the reverse were to be reality. What if Call of Duty series was the new 360 exclusive and Halo was the multiplat? How do you figure each would perform? My opinion is that COD would be an even stronger system seller under Microsoft's endless advertising budget and Halo would perform equal to it's single platform sales across three platforms with Activision's budget.

That's all folks.

Call of Duty and maybe Medal of Honor are the two only good "army games" that came out in the past 8 years.

I say this with love. Expand your horizons past the Wii.

Also what came out 9 years ago that was so good it caused you to make 8 years your cutoff date?

I have trouble with "army" games because I have trouble pantomiming actual wars. I've had family in nearly every war in which the United States has paticipated and turning that into a game seems kind of off, unless it goes full-tilt to get rid of all the glamour and portrays it in a realistic, potentially horrific way.

Most popular console shooter franchise - certainly
Most powerful franchise is still perfect dark, simply because of how awesome the N64 game was

I understand your point. However I know more people that came back from Iraq turned onto war games than those that were turned off. Purely anecdotal of course, but you get the point.

Some of the war games are a bit horrific. None of them can truly portray the brutality of war, because it would probably push well past the M rating all the way to a full blown AO. I'm pretty sure this is why Vietnam has been basically ignored by any major developer that would try to bring accuracy to the ugliness of that conflict. I personally think Call of Duty does an ok job at your suggestions, but they do seem biased since you always play one side of the conflict instead of both. It always gives you a sense of heroism from the player's side, no matter which side you're actually playing. I'm sure if they allowed you to play as the Germans, it would give you that same sense of heroism and positive outlook towards the cause playing that side.

COD games produced by IW are the best shooters I have played, and their sales support the quality. The non IW games originally were pretty meh but treyarch has really brought the quality to nearly identical to IW.  The series is a powerhouse.  By raw numbers Halo might be on top, but quality wise to sales nothing can beat COD.  Halo 1 was a great game.  Halo 2 was pretty far off of halo 1 and with an annoying voice and frankly I thought halo 3 was a waste of my $60(it is just nice to have the set).

IMO the original MOH on PC revolutionized the FPS genre (and birthed the talent that created COD series) so alot of respect needs to be given to that series if you want to support COD.

Side topic: whens the "new" wolfenstein hit HD consoles?

Huh? Joke or something?

I always wondered if Counter Strike: Source were ever to come on the consoles. Were would that be at in sales? would it be as popular as CoD games saying it was a massive hit on the PC and according to steam stats, over 90k are playing CS:S and over 70k are playing CS 1.6 at peak times. That way over 160k playing diffence versions of CS.