. Better control, better marketing possibilities, cross-selling, advertising, bigger target group.
Rethink that one.
Yeah, it gives control, but who makes those business decisions? Who wants control the most? I'll tell you, it isn't the marketers. They're the ones that have to tell people a feature was removed and deal with the aftermath. They don't want this.
Plus how do you gain advertising by sending people through IW.net? It's all done in-game, correct? Any ads that they serve in-game through IW.net could be served without taking this away. An in-game server browser could have done everything mandating IW.net could do. So that's likely not the issue, either.
Now, the game is primarily a console game, and consoles tend to not have dedicated servers, so that's more likely your reason. They've got no spare hands to make and test a dedicated server, so they're cutting it. They know that the PC community will be up in arms, but they also know that the PC community gets up in arms over everything and it doesn't alter sales much. I can't tell, Gamespy apparently doesn't do Stats anymore, but I'd guess that MW never had a huge dedicated server base and they know that the vast bulk of their users won't have a drastically different experience.
All that said... bunk. Really, this is moving the wrong way. Consoles should be moving towards dedicated servers, as player hosting leads to so many problems and so many cheating opportunities. You see some Xbox and PS3 devs hosting dedicated servers at least for the initial run of a game. Yeah, eventually they have to be turned off, but when the game is at its peak it's a much better experience. All of this will just be worse with PCs. Yeah, IW.net gives them supreme control and stats coming in, something developers love (stop blaming suits for everything.) But it's a hit and something you could acquire otherwise.