Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan analyst, has predicted that Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 could overtake Black Ops and its 20 million in sales, despite a bigger threat and more sales predicted for Battlefield 3.
The prediction is due to the “network effect created by the game’s (Black Ops) remarkable 17 million weekly active unique online players.” But it could be the social network of Call of Duty Elite, which has left quite a lot of questions about what is available free and what will be premium paid content, which leads to CoD players defecting to Battlefield 3 which will also launch a couple of weeks earlier.
Decent reviews for Battlefield 3 are also likely to grow sales, with Pachter predicting it will go past the 6.5 million sales for Bad Company 2.
And what do we think? I’ll predict that Modern Warfare is likely to do around the same as Black Ops, but that the series may have peaked around the 20 million mark – certainly there are few gamers on the planet who haven’t heard at least something about it. But increasingly I’m sensing more and more people are getting slightly bored with the CoD gameplay, and that’s something highlighted by the large number of close quarter maps in Black Ops. Given that MW3 might have the Infinity Ward name but not the whole staff of MW2, the fact that Battlefield 3 is out earlier and offers more varied gameplay, and there’s still a healthy number playing Bad Company 2 despite it launching as a MW2 rival rather than a Black Ops rival, I do think that BF3 will gain a lot more players this time round. If I had to bet, I’d say around 20 million for MW3 and 10 million for BF3.
What do you reckon? Place your bets now to look smug this time next year if you’re right!
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