As reported by Gamasutra, Janco Partners' Mike Hickey has predicted that Modern Warfare 2 will not only rake-in $338 million in sales it's first day on the market, but that it will be the "largest videogame release of the year" by selling 11.1 million units by the end of 2009."We believe Modern Warfare 2 will likely be the largest video game release for [calendar year] 2009," wrote the analyst in an investor's note. "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)."
Hickey continued to say that the popularity of the franchise has grown since the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. "We estimate the combined Xbox 360 and PS3 installed base for US and Europe has grown +125% and +200%, respectively since Modern Warfare's November '07 release, ushering in a remarkably larger market opportunity for Modern Warfare 2.
"We have estimated Modern Warfare life-to-date attach rates on the Xbox 360 and PS3 for both the United States and Europe and layered over the December '09 ending installed base estimates for our sell through scenarios.
"We meaningfully discounted each platforms life-to-date attach rate to arrive at our base case and worst case unit sell through estimates. In addition, we estimate that Modern Warfare has sold +2 million PC units, which we heavily discount for CY09 Modern Warfare 2 PC units sales estimates."
11 million is a bit much. "Realistic" war themes tend not to do as well as fantasy and sci-fi stuff kids and casual players can also get into. Many people will not play games with realistic violence like CoD's no matter how good the gameplay is.
That said, I also hope they aren't planning to make it even more of an arcade game than it is now. Bunny hopping, running while wearing 80 pounds of body armor and equipment, brick-piercing submachine gun rounds, instant air strikes, etc. Ugh, no one has yet made a truly authentic tactical FPS. GRAW came close, but was so limited. Operation Flashpoint was good in many ways too, but all ****ed up with bugs. Not sure how America's Army was, I couldn't stand the propaganda. LOL, realistic games will never sell 11 millions copies though, so the ******* at these game publishers will never fund them.
That said, I also hope they aren't planning to make it even more of an arcade game than it is now. [...] Ugh, no one has yet made a truly authentic tactical FPS. [...] LOL, realistic games will never sell 11 millions copies though, so the ******* at these game publishers will never fund them.
Mind you that because of the more arcade-style gameplay, the larger public got interested. You're right about people not buying purely realistic tactical shooters, but this game is far from that.
See, I can make up arbitrary numbers that have no mathematical basis what-so-ever too. Can I be paid these guys salaries now?
See, I can make up arbitrary numbers that have no mathematical basis what-so-ever too. Can I be paid these guys salaries now?
Indeed; wish I could get paid to sit in an office and guess how many copies a particular game will sell.
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