Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to Yield $500 Million in First Week Sales, says Pachter

Ever since E3 pundits have been predicting huge sales for Activision's upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which many believe will be the top selling title of this holiday season and possibly all of 2009.  Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, as part of his Activision earnings preview, put in his own two cents. 

"We expect global sales to exceed $500 million in the first week following launch, and think that the company can easily sell 10 million units in Q4," he stated. 

It's worth noting that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV broke records by generating more than $500 million in its first week, selling about 3.7 million units on its first day and about 6 million units in the first week. The game has sold over 13 million units to date and continues to generate interest with episodic content. Downloadable content has been a very strong aspect for the Call of Duty games as well, and Modern Warfare 2 will no doubt benefit from DLC too.

Modern Warfare 2 has already seen the largest pre-orders in Activision's history and GameStop said a few months back that it actually expects the game to become the best selling of all time. More recently, Modern Warfare 2 has been the subject of some controversy but that additional pre-launch publicity is only likely to help build even more buzz.