Oh boy look at all this hate

Keep in mind that while they might be obvious AV cash-grabs, the post-MW1 CoDs aren't that bad in and of themselves. You don't get that large a playerbase across all platforms if your game is shite. Sure, MW2's campaign was a complete mess, but it was still tighter, more polished, and more entertaining than quite a bit of the tripe out there. WaW did one of the most successful takes on the Pacific Theater out there, and Black Ops actually tries to tell a worthwhile story while retaining the superbly polished gameplay. For all the derision they get as AV's lap-dog, Treyarch, at least to me, really does put their heart into the games they make. I can't look at the entire Zombies thing in Black Ops and believe that was the product of a few disinterested in-for-profit guys.

And as much as everybody loves to complain about it, MP can still be fun as hell, especially when played with friends, not unlike another popular online shooter. They've really needed public betas in the past two games to iron out the glitches and imbalances before release, of course, and I'm still not fond of how killstreaks have been expanded upon, but try playing some of the other generic ass-shit out there (no points for naming Battlefield) and then tell me CoD is the worst of it.

CoD's problem isn't quality; don't try and kid youself that the games are terrible, because they really aren't. Go try out Homefront and you'll see what I mean. Their problem is refusal to change, which is especially ironic considering that the huge MP overhaul and move to the modern era in CoD4 is what kicked the franchise into overdrive in the first place. (IW had to do that in secret, even.) Since right know we know precisely dick about MW3, we'll have to see whether zombieIW+Raven+New guys+AV realize this, or if they're just going to hold on to the same cards. Standards of quality constantly improve, and while CoD4 may have shot the bar up high, they can only sit there for so long before somebody else takes the lead again.