This is at least a reasonable theory, but my understanding, which may be lacking, is that CoD hasn't been doing great recently; not TERRIBLE, but nothing like it was, and certainly not a "shatter the earth" demographic. Even more so for sports games. This would at least make sense, as both genres have been pretty deep into the slop for a while now without really causing problems for their core audience, but I just don't see the numbers being there. To be reasonably successful, sure, maybe. But to make a decent return on six years of dev time? To be the best selling game of all time?