Call of Duty didn't kill Titanfall: it was already dead

It's an absolute tragedy, the number of players that are playing Titanfall right this minute. It should be a good indicator that the game is in dire need of players that the game has been reduced to $19.99 for both PC and Xbox One – a good deal, by any measure. Unless you consider the possibility that you might not have enough players online to play the game. Is this Call of Duty's fault? Not by a long shot. Attempting to find a game that wasn't Attrition for the past several months (on PC, anyway) has been a mess.

When we first saw the trailers for Call of Duty: Advance Warfare, it was made VERY CLEAR why Respawn Entertainment was in legal trouble developing Titanfall. Activision and Sledgehammer behind the scenes had been creating something very similar.

In a nutshell: Respawn Entertainment (creators of Titanfall) was founded by Jason West and Vince Zampella. They created Call of Duty with Infinity Ward, subsidiary of Activision. Activision filed a report in 2010 that suggested two senior employees of Infinity Ward were being fired due to "breaches of contract and insubordination".

So there was a schism at some point. These two fellows left, created Respawn Entertainment, and took a big risk in creating the game Titanfall. The risk wasn't in the content, it was in the delivery.

The risk was in the format of the game – you're only able to play online. You depend entirely on other players to create a game you can play in.

There is no extended offline element in Titanfall.

Above: Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. Below: Titanfall.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has an offline campaign. Like all Call of Duty games, you can play offline if you wish. Most users play online after they've beaten the offline portion of the game – and you don't have to worry about finding a game to play.

You can ALWAYS play Call of Duty, no matter the status of online servers or number of players online.

Did Call of Duty kill Titanfall? No. Titanfall is still active – on Xbox One you'll have a much easier time finding a game.

Will Titanfall 2 be different from the first due to this dramatic drop in players over the past few months?

I sincerely hope so.