Maybe I'm in the minority then. Call of Duty to me means the tired and overdone WW2 shooters. I didn't pay any attention to the series until Modern Warfare.
Infinity Ward created Call of Duty, Activision decided to milk it by putting multuples teams on it to make them faster, and IW pushed against them. Do you blame them? I bet MW1 was only a CoD title because Activision wouldn't gamble on a new IP. (I believe I heard on the Giant Bombcast that Activision was actually doing market research to prove that a modern military shooter wouldn't sell, DURING the development of MW1) Also, Modern Warfare had "IW3" on the title screen, which tells me even at that point, IW was trying to distance themselves from what Treyarch was doing.
At 2015, Medal of Honor: AA was originally planned to have blood - and there were even screenies of the game w/ blood, in previews and all. EA forced it out of the game, so they could try to make Teen rating. This is one of the things that led to 2015 leaving EA; some of them creating and joining Infinity Ward; and then IW jumping ship to Activision.
Infinity Ward didn't want to do another WW2 shooter, which is what Activision wanted from them - IW wanted to do a modern FPS. I think this is what started the war b/t the two companies. And well...we've seem the war b/t the two companies play out like a nasty drama here...and of late, it's been pretty brutal b/t the two companies.
IW claims they still own Modern Warfare IP (after Vietnam), while Activision owns Call of Duty IP (Vietnam and before) - which is VERY interesting. I think that's where the whole branding of MW2 was all over the place - w/ COD tag; w/out COD tag; back to having COD tag, was the two companies were fighting over what to call the game. If what IW says is true - then, they probably don't want COD stamped on the game b/c they feel it is its own game.
But - really, though? If Activision did try to force COD tag on the original Modern Warfare (COD4), why did West and Zampella even allow it back then? Why wasn't COD4 just called instead Modern Warfare: Call of Duty? You mean to tell me IW and Activision couldn't agree to use COD for a freaking subtitle? Even having Call of Duty as a subtitle - damn, that's a lot of power; everybody knows the COD series. Sometimes, y'all just gotta' freakin' compromise.
Of course now, sure - Modern Warfare is probably bigger than the COD franchise, given MW2's sales.
What if Konami had some other dev make Metal Gear Solid 5, let Kojima make 6, and had a third dev do a spinoff at the same time? Would Kojima have a problem with his creation being whored out and him having no control over it? Hell yes he would, that's HIS series.
It depends on if Konami or Kojima owns the MGS IP, of course.
But, if I was Kojima - yeah, I'd be pissed, too.
EDIT:
Granted it depends on the studio doing the work that really tells us what sort of quality to expect. In the case of Splinter Cell, Ubi has been leapfrogging between its Ubisoft Montréal (developer of the original Splinter Cell, Chaos Theory, and Conviction) and Ubisoft Shanghai (Pandora Tomorrow and Double Agent). It's pretty clear where all the quality went. The Shanghai studio did a pretty shoddy job of both SC titles they got.
The pattern so far seems to be that leapfrogging a franchise will inevitably result in some inconsistent products. However, a full handover can go either way, it can flop or it can get better i.e. Tomb Raider's development getting handed over to Crystal Dynamics essentially saved the franchise.
I actually liked Pandora Tomorrow and Double Agent, despite their technical issues. DA's biggest program was the technical issues and some of the "in-between missions" at the terrorist HQ (i.e. the long-winded bomb-making mission). But, yes - I think the Original SC and Chaos Theory are the best ones in the franchise...so far.
Another instance of leap-frogging a game series messing things up - just look what Sierra did to FEAR franchise w/ all TimeGate-developed expansions (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate). That almost destroyed the damn franchise - especially Perseus. Hell, Monolith's FEAR 2 basically disregarded ALL of the events of the two Timegate-developed expansions...hehe.
