When Modern Warfare 2 was released, it became the biggest entertainment launch of all time. When Black Ops released, it too became the biggest entertainment launch of all time, outperform its predecessor. ‘Will MW3 deliver?’ is the question that’s been going through many a gamer’s mind, and the answer is a resounding yes.
Speaking to its employees in a letter today, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg spoke openly about the leak of Modern Warfare 3 on Kotaku, and how what could have been an really big problem was turned into a “win” by their extraordinary worldwide team.
He spoke of many things, including how they managed to connect with their retail partners worldwide, going into overdrive, sending websites live, getting pre-order details together, all while keeping a cool demeanor. But what struck me as outstanding was the fact that the yet unreleased game is already outperforming both Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 combined in popularity.
“I, for one, was incredibly proud of the team’s performance in that critical meeting,” said Hirshberg concerning the leak. “Instead of panicking, we took the fire of interest that had been started by the leak, and poured gasoline on it. Through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, we released our four teasers (which were not scheduled to launch for another week) onto the web. With equal agility, our worldwide sales organizations managed to put both the retail and .com presale programs and assets into launch mode in no-time flat. Everybody involved delivered under pressure.”
“The result?” he said, with numbers ready: “We had over 4.8 million hits on the various Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 teasers over those first 48 hours. To put that in perspective, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops had 61,000 and 89,000 hits, respectively, in their first two days. Pre-sales for MW3 are off to an amazing start. Perhaps, most importantly, we migrated the dialogue from one that was between our players and the leakers, to one between our players and us.”
Do you realize how many more views Modern Warfare 3 has had compared to the two former games combined? Millions more, and like Hirshberg said, the numbers speak loud.
It would seem that Activision has yet another hit on its hands.
isent it a little coincidental that retailers, preorder pages, hell even preorder content like posters were available so quickly?
it was not a leak, it was a PR stunt!
and a bloody good one at that!
If it was, it worked perfectly.
Blah, Blah, Blah….I am a bit sick of the Call of Duty series. Since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the games engine has not changed, the storylines are so predictable and short. They have given us the same game over and over pretty much. This holiday my money is on Battlefield 3 as fa as FPS’s go.
That’s what most of the community here is saying. Check out this thread. But like I’ve said, let’s give the game a chance to at least see what they bring this time around…
i was saying the same, but it looks like there trying to change it up a bit which is nice.
still positive it wont be a 10th as good as BF3, but it should at least be the best in the series!
Well…I really hope you are right nick. Black Ops left a really bad taste in my mouth and just turned me off from the series.