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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Hits $1 Billion
by Leigh Alexander [PC, Console/PC]
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January 13, 2010
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Activision called its shot, so to speak, with Modern Warfare 2, and thus far the gigantic release continues to measure up by the numbers: It's passed the $1 billion mark in worldwide retail, the publisher says.
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has exceeded our expectations and shattered theatrical box office and video game records," says Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.
When it comes to expectations, Activision said it wanted the "biggest entertainment launch of all time" for the title, and it seems to have achieved it: Modern Warfare 2 sold $550 million in its first five days, trumping five-day box office gross for major blockbusters like Avatar and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
"There are only a handful of entertainment properties that have ever reached the $1 billion mark, which illustrates the power of the Call of Duty franchise and mass appeal of this game," says Kotick.
Developed by Infinity Ward, the title released November 10, 2009 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Square Enix was the game's publisher in Japan. In late November, Activision said at the time that the Call of Duty franchise in total had generated over $3 billion worldwide.
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Both Avatar and MW2 have claimed to have sold 1 billion worth.
MW2:
1 bil / 60 (cost of MW2) = 16.6 mil people bought it as a rough estimate.
Avatar:
1 bil / 10 (cost of Avatar ticket) = 100 mil people bought it as a rough estimate.
The difference is that Avatar was experienced by 83.3 million more people.
I know getting the number of actual players is ridiculously difficult. I do, however, believe the gap between viewers and players is smaller. Regardless I agree that more people have probably watched Avatar then have played MW2.
Making a billion off of a game is a phenomenal feat.
How many fewer people would have gone to see _Avatar_ if the ticket price had been the equivalent of $60?
If the answer is "a lot fewer," then the accomplishment of MW2 is that much greater.
There's at least one that hasn't. ;)
A game whose single-player mode is even shorter than that of CoD4:MW -- at the same cost, without any improvements I care about like letting me save my game when I want -- doesn't get my money.
That personal viewpoint doesn't prevent me from appreciating MW2's true commercial success, though.
My point is about "how big the gamming audience is against other medias". Well, it's of course a lot smaller, but many times bigger (in reality) than we use to think. Piracy is a key problem and in the end, it makes the audience for $60 games be real tiny. But the real amount of people playing these games is far wider.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-most-pirated-games-of-2009-091227/
This post only considers direct downloads from uTorrent. The piracy world is bigger than that tiny slice which makes the go-for-free savvy crowd.
MW2:
1 bil / 60 (cost of MW2) = 16.6 mil people bought it as a rough estimate.
Avatar:
1 bil / 10 (cost of Avatar ticket) = 100 mil people bought it as a rough estimate.
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This rough estimate seems logic, but is to high for MW2 in my opinion. Activision sold a large ammount of games outside the US in europe for example, here the game was sold for 60€, this equals about 87 US$. The "official" price in the UK is 55 GPD, which equals 89 US$.
But the problem is the news itself. Activision can't know, how much MW2 made, cause they only know how many copies for what price they sold, they don't know, what the retailers sold the game for. Right now, Amazon sells the game for much lesser then 60 US$, 60€ or 60 GPD.
"Activision sold a large ammount of games outside the US in europe for example, here the game was sold for 60€, this equals about 87 US$. The "official" price in the UK is 55 GPD, which equals 89 US$"
Ummm.. MW2's price was cut in the UK by huge supermarket chains like Tesco and Asda to only £29/ £32 even BEFORE the game launched.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/36427/Could-MW2-price-drop-further-still
A huge chunk of the 3 million units of MW2 sold in the UK, were sold at these supermarkets at these very low prices.
No one bought the game for £55.
Also, the game has been selling in the US for as low as $40/$45 even since November/December from Best Buy, Amazon etc. Currently, Amazon is selling it for just $45.
So when you average it out, the average price of MW2 could very well be the $60 that poster "Reid Kimball" was talking about.
Of course we have the "Prestige Edition" and the "Hardend Edition" so that complicates the average price calculations.
Does that stop me from going to the movies? Of course not. The movies bring you new content on a regular basis. MW2 is the same until they offer DLC or a new version which could take a few months to a couple years.
In the end, though, props to IW and Activision for having a very successful game. $1 billion is a lot of money no matter how many people were required to fork it over. If you assume a 25/25/50 splits (dev/pub/retailer), IW is walking away with plenty of cash for future development. Let's hope they put it to good use.
You don't seem to understand my argument. Activision can't have numbers about the ammount of many MW2 made, cause they only know, at what price they sold the game, not for what price the game was sold in retail. So it is impossible for Activision to say what money MW2 generated in general. They can only say how much it made for Activision or how many copies they sold.
Both numbers are unknown to the public right now.
"Activision can't have numbers about the ammount of many MW2 made, cause they only know, at what price they sold the game, not for what price the game was sold in retail"
It doesn't really matter.
Acivision know how much they charge retailers for the game and how much retailers have paid them, and how much revenues they made from the game, and how much profits they made from the game.
Also Activision know what the RRP(recomemnded retail price) of the game is in every country they sell the game at, how many units they have shipped in every country, what the sell through figures are (from NPD, Chartrack etc), and what prices retailers are actually selling the game for. It's their business to monitor all these things, see?.
So it's pretty easy for them to know how much the game has
a. Sold though in units in every country
b. Generated in retail in every country.
c. Generated for Activision themselves in total revenue and profits
You write
"Also Activision know what the RRP(recomemnded retail price) of the game is in every country they sell the game at, how many units they have shipped in every country, what the sell through figures are (from NPD, Chartrack etc), and what prices retailers are actually selling the game for."
How should Activision know, at what price retailers are actually selling a game for? They can't know this, they can't check every store and write down the prices, how do you think something like that should be possible? And you can be sure, the retailers don't have any interest in telling anyone, for how much money they sold how many games. That's internal data, that isn't spreaded to anyone outside. And besides of this, Activision only know how much units somebody bought, they can't know how many units the buyer actually sold.
It is clear, the 1 billion US$ is a marketing number, that can't be proven in any way. This is the reason, it is uncommon to say something like this in the games business, usually, success is measured in units sold.