Call of Duty's Greed Is Threatening Another Great Crossover
Be ready to shell out an arm and a leg.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s next crossover is a doozy. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are hopping out of the sewers of New York City this month to inexplicably join the Black Ops roster with a series of special modes and skins.
The Venn diagram of players who love the acrobatic superhero team and Call of Duty is probably as close to a circle as one can get in today’s gaming landscape. Unfortunately, the fun of this comic collaboration is being undercut by the hefty price tag that will likely be attached to the seasonal drop.
Black Ops 6 revealed that this season’s Ninja Turtles crossover will entail a new skatepark-themed map, a zombie mode complete with undead Foot clan soldiers, a new Mosh Pit mode that lets players take advantage of the Turtles’ unique scorestreak abilities, and five new skins: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Splinter.
This event follows an unpopular $30 Terminator cosmetic bundle and the Squid Game 2 crossover. The latter had some fun limited-time game modes like Red Light, Green Light, but the cultural impact of Netflix’s relatively new show doesn’t go as deep as Eastman and Laird’s 40-year-old comic book characters.
Unfortunately, the Ninja Turtles event will highlight the worst part of Black Ops 6: its egregious monetization. Unlike previous events, getting all the limited-time skins feels appropriate this time around. Most fans of the characters would want to get the set of brothers and their rodent master sensei, but the price tag for doing so will be at least $90, more than a copy of the actual game. That’s eye-watering, especially since there’s no bundle discount.
What’s the point of buying into the events that Treyarch pieces together if it prices out the majority of players? The price gouging during Squid Game 2 felt weird, considering the show is about global elites taking advantage of a bunch of hapless have-nots, but the overpriced cosmetics of the Ninja Turtles event just feels mean.
This is awesome, but not $90 worth of awesome.
While games like Fortnite charge a similar amount for their skins, those are at least useable across all game modes well into the future of such live service titles. Those games are also free-to-play, making the premium price tag to rock your favorite character easier to swallow.
Despite Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone proving that skins can be transferable between Call of Duty entries, it's unlikely the cosmetics players are purchasing for Black Ops 6 will transfer to the next game. The target of such limited microtransactions are “whales,” players willing to spend whatever it takes to have the latest in-game item. But when whales become the only audience for seasonal content, it ruins the purpose of these otherwise fun events.
There are some cool bonuses locked behind these paid cosmetics, but who wants to drop all that cash?
At a time when Black Ops 6 is losing many of its regulars for all sorts of different reasons, bringing in the Ninja Turtles should be an easy way to stir up fan enthusiasm for the best Call of Duty game in years. Instead, returning players will be quickly reminded of how little the game cares about appeasing its player base. While Call of Duty is still riding high on brand recognition, continuing this gross level of monetization for a $70 game will do nothing but hurt the franchise — and deny most of us some sweet skins.
