Earlier today it was revealed that Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has already sold over 1.2 million copies in the U.K. alone. That's a staggering number, but the worldwide total could really be incredible if Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter is correct.
Extrapolating from the U.K. sales data and the approximate 2-to-1 relationship between Modern Warfare 2 and the previous U.K. record holder GTA IV, Schachter has estimated that Modern Warfare 2 has sold around 7 million units across the globe in its first 24 hours. For comparison purposes, GTA IV sold "only" 3.7 million units on its first day.
Schachter added that "with GTA IV selling-through 6mm units worldwide in its first week, that suggests week one of Modern Warfare 2 worldwide sell-through could approximate ~11.7mm. While 2x the week one tally for GTA IV may seem aggressive, the bottom line is that we believe current consensus estimates of around 12mm for the December quarter may end up being conservative."
The analyst also pointed out that the first day U.K. sales probably benefited from some retailer price wars. "First-person shooter titles tend to do better in the U.S. and U.K. markets vs. some other markets due to cultural reasons. In addition, heavy discounting and competition amongst supermarket stores in the U.K. (an important sales channel there) may have contributed to stronger first-day sales," he said.
5 Comments
10 months ago
I wish someone would pay me money to put two and two together with the possibility of not being right. Not saying that sounds unreasonable, I was there at midnight with over 200 others and I live in relatively small town. There was over 500 pre-orders at various locations in the city I live in, not to mention lines at Walmart for those who didn't reserve a copy. I'll wait for official word.
10 months ago
Yeah the analysts can certainly be wrong at times. I'm not sure you can take the 2-to-1 ratio from the UK and necessarily apply that to the whole world. I'd assume ATVI will make some official sales record breaking announcement within the week.
10 months ago
ATVI definitely will. I've been seeing a huge cannibalization of play time from other games on XBL, i.e., MW2 has severely cut into play of other games beyond what the first Modern Warfare did, up there with what Halo 3 did back when it launched. But since MW2 is also on PS3 and PC at launch (unlike Halo 3), its day one total sales should blow away anything we've seen before.
Until the MW2 launch, Borderlands was generally the biggest game on XBL in November so far. (I expect it to have surprisingly big Oct sales when NPD releases tomorrow.)
But one other thing, because of the price drop and resulting increase in sales of the PS3 hardware, I would expect a higher ratio of PS3 to 360 sales for MW2 compared to MW, though that's not hard to imagine.
Will need more time to pass, particularly this weekend, to see just how much play time MW2 gobbles up from other games.
10 months ago
I highly doubt this estimate is correct. Activision shipped 7.6 million units into retail for launch. There is simply no way they already sold through 7 million of that.
10 months ago
Curious as to where did the 7.6 million ship-in number came from. As a directional indicator: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/gamestop-modern-warfare-2-most-pre-ordered-game-ever/
That says a lot because if MW2 is most pre-ordered game in Gamestop history, the ship-in to Gamestop alone has to be multiple millions. Add in worldwide ship in, plus US Best Buy, US Wal-Mart...7.6 seems like it could be somewhat low.
Also keep in mind that Activision isn't going to ship in "just enough" to cover day one and then immediately ship more in 24 hours. Retailers would scream if they ran out of inventory after a day or two and see business go to other retailers with stock. So that further implies for a title like this the big retailers received multi-million unit ship-in numbers. Again, 7.6 for initial ship-in seems low.
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