The potential of a Call of Duty boycott raises two issues:

It’s CoDmod2! Don't even pretend an extra £10 is going to stop you when we will buy games that are nowhere near as good for full retail. They know this is true; they have done the market research. They know a lot of people clocked a solid week plus playing CoD4 online. £55 for 168 hours of entertainment is still a bargain and you know it.

The role of a publisher is to take the flak for anything that fans of a series don’t like. People blame activision/microsoft/EA for the price / rushing a game out so it isn’t good / holding back on content for DLC. I can’t help but think that one of the services that publishers provide is a 'bad guy' image to take the brunt of fans anger. Do you really think infinity ward is an innocent little helpless developer having more money forced upon them by a cruel publisher?

Activision are happy to get this awful reputation to defend their developers because it doesn’t impact on other games they publish. If the proposed boycott was to have any effect then it would have to be aimed at all "Activision Blizzard" titles and be combined with actions likely to reduce their sales to other people (negative reviews on Amazon being a good example, especially considering the amount of awful dross they dupe unsuspecting members of the public to buy).

I know I can’t resist CoD, but I can gladly purge myself of other Activision Blizzard titles. Here is a guide of superior substitutes for their games.

Don’t buy Tony Hawks, buy Skate.
Don’t buy Prototype, buy inFamous
Don’t buy guitar hero, buy a guitar
Don’t buy odd numbered CoDs, save that cash for the more expensive even numbered CoDs
Don’t buy Starcraft, buy Company of Heroes
Don’t buy Warcraft, buy heroine