If you were to ask Activision how good it thinks Call of Duty: Black Ops will sell, the publishing mammoth would utter big boasts. It would claim the aforesaid game would outdo Modern Warfare 2 to become the best selling shooter of all time, and would most likely cite the latest pre-order numbers from leading retailer, GameStop to support its claim.
But that’s Activision, what do analysts have to say about the situation? Some support Activision’s claim but not Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter; he thinks the game will sell great but it won’t surpass MW2 in sales because the games press will look for ways to compare it to that other game, and will score it lower because it’s not a carbon copy and also because, well, it’s not Infinity Ward developing it but Treyarch.
That’s what he told Industry Gamers recently, looking at the history of the Call of Duty titles, Pachter notes the top ranking ones have been those of Infinity Ward.
“The challenge is that Treyarch is called the ‘other’ Call of Duty developer for a reason; the top review scores for the franchise on gamerankings.com are held by Infinity Ward games, with Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, the original Call of Duty, and Call of Duty 2 each receiving average scores of 89 or higher. The best reviewed Call of Duty game from Treyarch (World at War) received an 85.7% score, while Call of Duty 3 got an 82 rating,” said Pachter.
“I don’t know whether the gaming press will suddenly become more charitable than they have in the past, but my read on them as a group is that they are a hypercritical and bitter lot, and I think that they have the potential to find many things wrong with Black Ops, chief among them that the game is not Modern Warfare 2.”
He continued, adding: “A read through of the reviews on Medal of Honor will show you that the gaming press is just waiting to compare Black Ops to Modern Warfare 2, and although Black Ops looks phenomenal, I’m not sure it will get the benefit of the doubt. With that said, if the game gets a review score in the 90s, I think that the game has a chance to sell as well as Modern Warfare 2, due to a larger console installed base.
However, competition is quite fierce this holiday, with competitive games like Halo Reach, Medal of Honor and Vanquish all in the marketplace, and anyone who buys one of those games will have $60 less to spend on other shooter games. Thus, I must conclude that Black Ops won’t sell as well as Modern Warfare 2, but I do think that the Call of Duty franchise will continue to sell very well.”
Treyarch’s effort, Black Ops, will go on sale on November 9th for PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii and DS.
agreed.
So GAME, will you buy Black Ops?
YEP IF IT GET A GOOD REVIEW. you?
I’ve been saying no all along, but seeing that I own a games site, and pending it gets good reviews, I will. Especially since we need an Xbox 360 game to get online together on. So yeah, if it’s good.
rigth if it good. i hated halo reach!
Yeah some of the guys on here didn’t like it either. Still a good game, just not great.
for me it feels like Halo 3 and I’ve played Halo 3 many many hours.
Yeah, I think Josh said the same thing. If we choose to play said title online though, would you join in? Have you created your GTUnit account?
yeah i will join.
I’ve had my Gt in a really long time now and I do not want change. is that a problem?
No prob, just can’t remember it. Did you add me on Xbox Live already?
What is you GT i will add. mine is II THE GAME I1.
wont be the media effecting the sales, it will be the developers themselves.
treyarch dont really have a good track reccord, in fact i cant think of one good game they made!
W@W was ok, but i only enjoyed that because its one of the very few ps3 games that has co-op.
QoS sucked donkey balls!!!!!
not to mention they have half the fan base IW has.
it may have more preorders but i seriously cant see this selling more than 8M copies.
November 9th.