Modern Warfare 2 launch aims to eclipse Halo 3, GTA IV

by Randy Nelson on Jun 18th 2009 10:55PM

Activision already has great expectations for Modern Warfare 2, but outselling all previous Call of Duty titles is just the beginning. The publisher has hired marketing firm TWBA/Chiat/Day and given it marching orders to deliver the "biggest entertainment launch of all time."

In order to accomplish this, MW2 will need to surpass some established launch sales triumphs. The first is Halo 3, with 1.7 million copies moved on day one in fall 2007. More recently, Grand Theft Auto IV took the title of "biggest launch" thanks to first day sales of 3.6 million units. At this point, we think Activision needs to be less concerned with its game being huge -- it will be -- and more focused on ensuring PSN and Xbox Live don't utterly die when it hits stores November 10.

[Via GI.biz]

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Tags: activision, infinity-ward, Microsoft, modern-warfare-2, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (116)

how is this surprising? it's activision for god's sake. of course they want it to have an amazing launch! i know at least half the guys in my school are gonna be skipping school on november 10. always happens when there's a major shooter release.

I can really see that happening, and they will have on sale with me on day one.

The lack of a "call of duty" brand might hurt it's chances.

not really. i know a lot of people who didn't even notice they took off the call of duty, and just call it call of duty 6. it's probably not going to noticeably affect sales.

holy shit, i never even noticed it was missing the COD name till you mentioned it. I guess i automatically just associated in my mind once i saw modern warfare 2.

I don't entirely agree with this. I know there's a lot of brand recognition with "Call of Duty", but personally, I'm not a fan of the series at all. WWII games don't excite me. On the other hand, CoD4: MW was amazing. I didn't buy it because it was a CoD game. I bought it because it was modern, and looked amazing. I wasn't let down at all. I didn't buy CoD: WaW because it was back to the same old "Call of Duty". I'm kinda talking in circles here, but I think there's more than a few people who will agree with me when I say that I will absolutely be buying MW2 on Day One, and to be honest, there's at least a small part of me that is thrilled that it won't have the "CoD" stigma holding it back.

This is all of course, my preference/opinion. I also happen to believe that CoD:WaW wouldn't have been half as successful, had CoD4 not paved the way. To further that point, CoD4's success had (in my opinion) very little to do with the success of CoD3.

Retailers are marking it with a 'Call of Duty' tag next to Modern Warfare 2.

At least in my area they are.

I'm kindah sick of people calling it Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 lol. I mean it's kindah just a pet peeve I guess.

As a side note, wasn't the rumor/story that CoD6 was gonna be in Vietnam?

It's not gonna hurt them, the bottom line is it all comes down to marketing. And Activision can certainly do that effectively.

Everything 'TheAngryGamer' said.

My sentiments exactly.

I think it can easily put up big numbers like those, pretty much everyone i know of who's buying it is going to get it at mid night....agreed xbox live please hold up or so help me god ill take those stupid free arcade games that we get for our troubles and shove them where the sun don't shine!!!!

i'm sure it'll at least sell more than halo 3 at release. beating GTA4 would be one hell of an accomplishment though.

It should pass them since it's coming to more platforms but it probably won't touch GTA's numbers.

No way will it beat GTA IV, it's a little too niche. It will beat Halo 3 if only due to multi platform. I won't be buying it for myslef, feel free to gift it though.

I'm buying this game so yay!

Is the (superior) pc version coming out on the same day?

Is it getting foggy here?!! I guess is just the smog coming from you post.

Hexen, you mean the smug?

This game will seem like nothing compared to MAG. If MAG comes out the same time MW2 does then It will not sell well I think. Sure maybe popularity but MAG is a new revolution. Sorry COD but your game falls way short of the bigtime sony exclusive.

That's just fanboyism right there. No way a brand new IP will outsell an VERY established IP..especially when you have to go by what the people are generally looking at when looking at MAG vs MW2.

MAG was pushed back 2 weeks after MW2 recently. People who made MAG's last game? SOCOM: Combined Assault, FAIL. MW2 makers last game? CoD4 = WIN. Not to mention everyone, including myself is worried that Zipper will drop the ball with 256 players if they don't have the right amount of dedicated servers..granted I have both MAG and MW2 on reservation, but looking more forward to MW2 as it's a better game and developing company (Infinity Ward).

wow, you're an idiot. are you trying to say MAG will sell better than MW2 (hahahahahaha), get better reviews than MW2 (not going to happen), or something else?

MAG will be lucky to outsell Shadowrun

sorry bigblue, but MAG would never outsell COD, the devs know this too, they have said it themselve in not so much words this is why they are releasing MAG in 2010.

Its no secret that MW1 DOMINATED peoples minds, MAG is a new ip not everyone knows about this.

kill, the current release is in november... not 2010...

bigblue2012 is probably just Sprinkles posting as a sony fan to give the impression that someone out there is as retarded as he is. :p

the only way that will ever happen is if activision drops it (like with brutal legend) and then sues the company that picks it up

MAG is going to have a lot of blots when it's released, don't think it will be pristine game on day one. Moreover, Modern Warfare 2 on the other hand, which is being developed by an acclaimed developer, is already a polished game that is building upon the success of the last installment. You're logic is erroneous.

Zipper is an acclaimed dev too. SOCOM has dont well for itself over the years. It was the only good shooter on the Playstation for years and years

Mag is nothing new. BF2 brought to the console. I'll take any CoD or MW2 over BF2 any day. :l

I was totally stoked to get this game until I read about the first 2 map packs being timed exclusives for the 360. Probably not going to buy it now becuase of that. Maps are the biggest part of a game like that, and to exclude ( for a while at least)all ps3 owners is a slap in the face.

Where did u hear this? Thats a little stupid -.- i have to WAIT to play a map pack while everyone else bangs it out all night long? now ima have to get this on both consoles too.

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p278/lammal412/VaderscreamsNOOOOOOOOO.jpg

That's an awfully stupid reason not to buy a game.

I'm sure it will be a few weeks at the most. Maybe Microsoft is being little bitches and saying that bc PSN releases stuff only on Thursdays (usually).

xbox live should be fine but the psn is really gona tank...go ahead call me a fan boy i dont care, the truth hurts doesent it!

nah your right.. I'm the fanboy though and trust me PSN servers will take a big hit that day

i have a feeling that both services are gonna end up alright, maybe one or two days of problems at most. and chris, it's less than $5 a month. that's hardly anything. that's coming from a ps3 fanboy.

PSN will NOT go down lol Nor will Xbox live they will both be flooded with high volumes that day but PSN wont go down it never has, what is ure thory based on?

& @ Sly, personaly i think xbox live should be free, remeber the period when thousands on xbox live went wild changing thier xbox personal messege to "Xbox live should be free" and "Make xbox live free" i do was funny lol, i remeber playing gears 1 and this dude was telling me how everyone was doing it. I did it too, didnt change n e thing but still

hey remember LBP shitty online launch? Also Socom had the most horrible servers until they finally fixed them months later. PSN is good most of the time.. but a game at launch on PSN is almost always laggy.

oh and ofcourse the PSN wont go down but the game itself will be really laggy on the PSN.

To put in perspective the last time I checked the unique user count there were 14 million unique players on the 360 COD4 and 4 million unique PSN users on COD4.

^^^^^Interesting stat there anticrawl. Thanks for that.

As for Live vs PSN I think both will be severely affected by the game.

Although to be honest I don't think that's acceptable. By now both companies (MS & sony) should realize what a huge game this will be and SHOULD be taking key steps ensure that nothing like that happens on Day 1. Especially MS since they are charging it's users for the right to play online.

Anyways the operative word there is SHOULD. And since when has a company done what it should do 100% of the time?

Personally I'm gonna wait a few weeks b4 getting MW2 if I decide to buy it at all that is. Cuz I'm really more interested in several other multiplat games coming out this fall. Like AC2 for instance.

the game sold easily over 14 million. actually, it was over 14 million at january 3rd 2009 just on the PS3 and 360. that doesnt count for the millions of pc players and all the people who cant get to xbox live and PSN

one game might be affected on psn if alot of people jump on at once but other games should be fine. i might finally have cod4 by then

@Anticrawl

Bringing population bases into this seems a bit unfair as the Xbox360 has had about a year longer to sell than the PlayStation 3. This is especially effected by the prices. However I'd say the extra price for the PS3 seems worth it when comparing .3% failure rate as opposed to a 30% failure rate, the cost of either an ethernet cable or network adapter for online, $50 a year for Xbox live, and the lack of Blu-Ray. Not to mention (correct me if I'm wrong) most 360s have only a 20GB harddrive, while PS3s originally had 20/60GB options, which were then upgraded to 40GB/80GB options that were even cheaper than the original options at the sacrifice of a little bit of backwards compatibility. I believe there was even a point where a 160GB PS3 bundled with Uncharted and a Dualshock 3 controller was available.

I'm not saying the Xbox360 is a bad console, but people really put down to much on the PS3's pricetag, especially considering in the long run it costs less. Especially if you ever plan on getting a Blu-Ray player. Which I believe it won't be long before that's a necessity.

@Leoneri

I fail to see how that has anything to do with the numbers I threw out there from Activision themselves. Any and all broken 360's have been repaired, refurbished and recirculated into the system. Replaced/repaired 360's from Microsoft aren't counted into the total number either. When a gamer loses their 360 they don't start over from scratch, all their data is stored on their harddrive and a backup of their gamertag, personal info and purchases on Microsoft's servers.

@Leoneri

I have all three consoles. My 360 came with an Ethernet cable, hdmi cable, component and composite cables and a harddrive. Everything I need to just hook up and play with. No strings attached. Hell they even come with two games now. Most all gamers still play on a LAN and not WLAN, not only is the latency better but there is no fear of interference from a wireless network. Also sorry to tell you most gamers don’t care about movies and the most the disc drive gets used outside of games for each consoles is to upconvert DVD’s to 1080i/1080p.

I doubt it'll happen but only because they dropped the Call of Duty from the title. I think this game will sell huge number...in the long run even more than COD 4 but since they decided to call it Modern Warfare 2 (alone) a lot of non-gamers will not buy the game on day one.

Once the hardcore gamers buy it and show it to their friends they'll go oohhh! this is the new Call of Duty!! they changed the title! awesome! and then they'll go to the store and buy it.

what that means is that day one sales may not be as high as many expect.

Everyone seems to be worried about dropping the "Call of Duty" title, but the commercial you're going to see a hundred times before its launch will include "From the creators of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" without a doubt, so really, I think MW2 has a good chance (certainly better than anything other than the upcoming Halos) of beating GTA4 launch.

The lack of the Call of Duty brand name on the box won't affect people that follow sites like Joystiq.

But for the the mainstream consumer, it could affect initial sales until they figure out that it's the sequel to COD4.

As far as the console wars go.. who cares, enjoy the game on whatever you own.

well, except the Wii. they'll be busy with the #1 game of the fall, wii sports resort.

that's the true competitor to MW2

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Modern Warfare 2 launch aims to eclipse Halo 3, GTA IV

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