With over 14 million units sold (as of March) and more than $1 billion in revenues, Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 set entertainment records. The publisher is hoping to one-up its last effort with Call of Duty: Black Ops this fall. That's a tall order for developer Treyarch, which now has even more pressure to do well, considering the state of Infinity Ward.
While some may doubt that a Treyarch Call of Duty can live up to what Infinity Ward built, the early trailers for Black Ops have looked great, and analysts seem to be getting more bullish on the title. Cowen Group's Doug Creutz now believes that the game actually could come much closer to Modern Warfare 2's sales level than initially thought. He's forecasting 10.7 million units sold for year one. That would lead to a 17 percent year-over-year decline for the Call of Duty brand; originally he had modeled a 29 percent decline.
And that still might be a conservative estimate, Creutz noted. As buzz for the game continues to build, Black Ops may do even better. "A strong performance by the Treyarch-developed Black Ops would help combat the notion that the departure of key Infinity Ward talent could permanently impair the Call of Duty franchise," he said.
[Thanks to Gamasutra for the tip]
3 Comments
May 28, 2010
It's over 20M in sales for MW2. Check your your data.
May 28, 2010
I should clarify... as of March. I haven't seen an official 20M tally, where do you see that?
May 30, 2010
Gamer Note - MW2 was the biggest pile of kak/crap/lameness of 2009 due to multiple reasons, Black Ops is not made BY Infinity Ward and thus is not an actual CoD game therefore it wont sell any units.....night vision goggles....enough said.....get a brain or get out of the games industry if you think I'm wrong