Modern Warfare 2 Sales Unhindered by Controversies

Both GameSpot and GamePolitics reported yesterday that despite the recent controversies surrounding Modern Warfare 2, which is launching next Tuesday, game sales are projected to be huge.

Even USA Today picked up on the story:

"By all indicators, we anticipate Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the biggest entertainment launch of all time," says Tony Bartel, executive vice president for merchandising and marketing at GameStop. "As of today, the number of pre-order reservations we've taken for the game is the highest for any title we've ever sold in our 6,200 store network."

James Brightman wrote for Industry Gamers, saying:

Ever since E3 pundits have been predicting huge sales for Activision's upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which many believe will be the top selling title of this holiday season and possibly all of 2009.  Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, as part of his Activision earnings preview, put in his own two cents.

"We expect global sales to exceed $500 million in the first week following launch, and think that the company can easily sell 10 million units in Q4," he stated.

I think that Infinity Ward's ability to shrug off all the contention surrounding Modern Warfare 2 -- from the removal of Dedicated Servers, to the content leak, to the homophobic advertisement -- essentially comes down to a point I made in a few of my earlier blog posts: gameplay is the best advertising you can get in this industry. Publishers and franchises are to videogames what authors are to novels, and directors to movies, but even moreso.

Dropping $59.99 + tax on a game requires a much greater deal of trust in the product (and its creators) than buying a DVD or novel, or even purchasing a movie ticket. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has become a staple of the online FPS multiplayer experience. Many gamers, casual and hardcore alike, are likely to overlook a transgression or three in order to recreate or enhance the entire they had playing the original title.

Sales Follow-Up on World of Goo

Last week I posted about the temporary Pay-What-You-Can offer for World of Goo, and on this past Wednesday GamePolitics.com reported some of the numbers that the stunt generated. "The ability for consumers to pay what they wanted to for the title also generated an enormous amount of publicity, further benefiting sales," they reported. Publicity might be harder to measure, but I did touch on the fact that it could boost future game sales and new launches.

For anyone interested in the sheer numbers, however:

The average price paid for the game was $2.03, while almost 17,000 people chose to pay a single cent and another 21,000 plus paid between 2 cents and $1.99. The next largest category was the $5.00 to $5.99 range, with over 7,300 customers. At the other end of the spectrum, 4 people chose to pay $50.00 for the game.

Not necessarily within the scope of this blog, but I thought that it was a nice follow-up.