Sales of upcoming, highly anticipated shooters Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will make up around 15 percent of total packaged video game software sales for the current fiscal quarter, according to analysts.
As reported by business news website Forbes, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicted that together the two games will sell over $1.4 billion in revenue during the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011.
As for the individual titles, Pachter suggested that Modern Warfare 3 will sell around 16 million units this year, and go on to sell another 8 million during 2012.
In comparison, he believes that Battlefield 3 will sell 8 million this year, and an additional 2 million copies next year.
He said, "I'd guess that around half of the console copies of Battlefield 3 will be bought by people who also buy Modern Warfare 3, so around 2 to 3 million will buy both. I don’t see much cannibalization of the titles."
EA revealed earlier this month that pre-orders of Battlefield 3 have now surpassed 2 million in total. The game is due to be released this week.
Hmm, I'm not convinced. Activision are always very vague about their numbers, so the pre-order info is irrelevant. As for the sales predictions, I'm sure it'll sell more than Battlefield but EA are pushing a pretty effective marketing campaign with a more precise multiplayer structure than MW which has picked up the 'WOW virus', namely 13-year old oily-squits.
Like most predictions these analysts make, they will be inaccurate. 16 million in a month and a half? Please, won't happen, not even half of that will sell by then.
I don't know, I just get the feeling like this game won't do as well as its predecessors. I have little to base this on but I think it will sell less than Black Ops. Yes, MW3's preorder numbers are up but I think there will be more falloff from subsequent sales this time around. We'll know as soon as December comes to a close I suppose.
This is true but I am interested to see if BF3 steals a significant number of players from MW3 and thus influences MW3's numbers. Also, you are right, they have been saying there will be a decline but I just get a feeling this is where the decline will begin. It's just a feeling and will probably be completely wrong but we shall see soon enough (although i still think 16 million is out of reach for MW3). I hope EA provides sales figures from Origin to help see if there was a shift at all from MW3 to BF3.
