Modern Warfare 2

One more milestone for Modern Warfare 2. Its sales crossed 20 million units worldwide. Speaking at the E3 investor conference, Thomas Tippl, CFO of Activision, said: “Modern Warfare 2 has sold more than 20m units against an install base of 55m on Xbox 360 and PS3.”

20 million copies? Woah.

Now Modern Warfare 2 is very close to some of the best-selling games of all-time. Those are:

New Super Mario Bros – 22,490,000

Nintendogs – 23,260,000

Mario Kart Wii – 22,550,000

Wii Play – 27,380,000

Wii Fit – 22,610,000

Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick said on the occasion that CoD franchise has “reached life-to-date revenues of $3bn.”

We also know that this Infinity Ward developed title had the biggest opening week of all time. Guinness Book of world Records labeled it as “The Most Successful Entertainment Launch of All Time.”

Let us wait and watch what Call of Duty: Black Ops does.

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Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, acknowledged during the quarterly earnings call of the company that since top two executives were dismissed, Infinity Ward has seen 35 employees quitting their job.

He says the resigning of so many executives have “obviously disappointed” the publisher. He also said that he expects more will be leaving the troubled studio.

Well, Kotick still stands with the decision of Activision to remove the two executives in March, Jason West and Vince Zampella. He said, “We felt that we had no choice.”

He said further that the studio “remains an important part” of its future plans for the CoD franchise and will also continue to support the remaining employees of the company.

West and Zampella, after their dismissal, sued the publisher. They claimed that they were owed royalty payments in MW2 sales.

Activision counter-suit the two for breach of contract. It claimed that both the executives secretly flew to Northern California for meeting the closest competitor of Activision. However, Acitivision did not mentioned the name of the competitor. Well, the largest publisher in the region is Electronic Arts.

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The advanced orders of Modern Warfare 2: Prestige Edition has started and it has also heated up the Amazon retail.

The Prestige Xbox 360 SKU on this Thursday has held a sales increase of 750 and has ranked as the second best selling on Amazon Video Games division. Not only this, the PS3 version of the game has held a 264 percent of sales increase and has been ranked twelfth this week.

The Prestige Edition of the much awaited MW2 game also contains fully-functional Night Vision Goggles, as it has been also reported earlier. This goggles allows a sight in absolute darkness up to fifty feet either in black and white or else night vision green.

Added to this the SKU also includes the MW2 game, CoD Classic full downloadable game, Hardbound art book “Behind the Lines”, and also a special-edition Steelbook case which contains a custom artwork by the Infinity Ward.

The price sale of Modern Warfare 2 is $149.99.

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Is the picture shows the cover art of Modern Warfare 2? Yes. It is the cover box of the game.

Did you notice any thing special in it?

It is the name tag of the Call of Duty. Yes, in the game case and box art there holds the Call of Duty tag with the Modern Warfare name. This is the fresh and just completed production ready and it is of course waiting to be filled with retail discs.

The Community Manager of Infinity Ward, Robert Bowling (aka FourZero Two) recently revealed the cases of MW2 with box art images to display the Call of Duty brand being present right on the front.

Well! lots of adding and subtracting phase of the brand awareness name tag is over now with this release of cover art. But yeah, may be in future the publisher may slowly wipe out the CoD name.

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There has been one more twist in Modern Warfare 2. This time it is regarding the relationship with the Call of Duty. This game will not leave the nest without the name of mom and dad. The reason is unknown. Now it will carry the tag of Call of Duty with it.

The hints which comes to media regarding adding the CoD name with it before the release is simply for brand awareness. Destructoid’s Nick Chester shared a Google Trends chart displaying a rapid drop in focus on Modern Warfare when it was dated. At the same time, few analysts were also saying that MW2 may not be able to stand on its own two feet quite yet.

One more reason is there of adding the Call of Duty name. MW2 is the first real sequel in the long running series of Call of Duty. Infinity Ward has said, “We have focused our attention on Modern Warfare in order to most effectively communicate the fact that this is the first true sequel in the Call of Duty series.”

Well call it as you like it. One thing is assured that this game in the series is going to sell like hotcakes.

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Recently there was a survey that suggested that the future Call of Duty games may charge a monthly fee. This news was something like a shock to all the fans of CoD series.

The developer of Call of Duty series, Infinity Ward, has assured fans after this news, which was flooded in the media that they won’t be paying for any subscription service in Modern Warfare 2. They said that they have nothing to do with the rumor and it is also implemented with Modern Warfare 2.

This was the message that was posted by Infinity Ward in their official forum:

“This rumor has absolutely nothing to do with Infinity Ward or our games, including Modern Warfare 2. We would never introduce such a system for Modern Warfare 2 so don’t worry. Multiplayer will always be equal and free for everyone as always.”

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Without the tag of Call of Duty in Modern Warfare 2, a survey says that lesser people in the US recognized the game. The survey was done by OTX.

The awareness of the game dropped from 40 percent points to 20 percent points without the name tag.

Nick Williams of the GamePlan Insights division for OTX said, “Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title.”

He also further said, “However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed ‘Call of Duty’ from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.”

In early June, OTX found that consumers’ purchase intent for MW2 ranked high on the research firm’s top 50 most anticipated games list. Though this, but it was still behind games including Bungie’s Halo 3: ODST, Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros., Sony’s God of War 3, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 2.

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Top video games industry analysts and also Activision predicts that that Modern Warfare 2 will be the largest selling game in this year. All are so confident that Activision is now going to pull out all of the stops in promoting the launch this game.

Through sources we have come to know that the entire promotion campaign is still in the final planning stages. The company is planning to start an aggressive marketing for the title in August. The main target of this aggressive marketing is to encourage gamers to pre-order the title. Sources also report that many rewards and incentives will also be offered to get gamers to plunk down their deposit for MW2 in advance.

The first MW title sold more than 13 million units on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC platforms. For MW2, analysts believe that the title will be sold based on the name alone.

Some people even voice that the decision to spin the MW series off from the CoD fold may be a risky move. This is just because many of the gamers did not realize that this new branding move has taken place. But well, now it seems that Modern Warfare 2 has also made its own identity.

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As a thank you to all the gamers who purchased the ‘CoD: World at War’ game, the following statement was issued:

These outstanding feats would have never been possible without the continued dedication and support from all of the loyal Call of Duty fans. For that, we at Treyarch and Activision would like to extend our sincerest Thank You. We’re honored and humbled to have one of the greatest online communities in video game history behind our products!

For Treyarch, those sales figures are an achievement in itself and for Activision it confirms that the Call of Duty Franchise is one of their biggest ever. Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith, has stated recently that total sales of the Call of Duty titles have now hit an impressive 35 million units worldwide with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare reaching just over 13 Million of those sales alone.

If that wasn’t enough, Janco Partners (Analyst Firm) Mike Hickey is predicting that the upcoming ‘Modern Warfare2′ will be the biggest selling game of 2009.

“We believe Modern Warfare 2 will likely be the largest video game release for [calendar year] 2009. For the Company’s fiscal Q409 period (Dec. ending), we anticipate the sell through to consumers of 11.1 million units for an estimated retail value of $803 million and sell-in approximating 12.4 million units, for an approximated sales value of $666 million (we assume demand is 90% of supply).”

“In addition to the success of Modern Warfare, we believe the potential Modern Warfare 2 fan base grew with the holiday ’08 release of Call of Duty: World at War, which management suggested 1/5 of buyers were new franchise gamers. The game has sold an estimated 11 million units in 6 months, suggesting an additional 2 million potential Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 consumers this holiday.”

For anyone who could possibly not know, ‘Modern Warfare 2′ is set for release on November 10th 2009.

Will it be the biggest selling game of the year, what are your thoughts?

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The gaming industry media is flooded with the news of Modern Warfare 2 every day. The maker of the game always claimed that this new series of the Call of Duty will be a huge success. It may be also true because none of us really doubt the sales potential of Modern Warfare 2.

Few days before Activision said to the press that this sequel of CoD will be the “largest entertainment launch of 2009.” This phrase was said by Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey. Gamasutra mentioned that Hickey estimates the sales of MW2 may hit 11.1 million units in this year itself. After the launch i.e. on November 10, the game will only get six weeks of sales. It is also estimated that on the first day itself the game will make total revenue of $338 million.

It is also predicted about the game that it will be the largest video game release of 2009. Janco Partners have also placed a ‘Buy’ rating on Activision Blizzard stock. It has a price target of $17. It is actually targeting pre-orders.

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