According to the LA Times, Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) cost between $40million and $50-million to develop. This does not include the marketing and distribution costs, which are estimated to amount to around $150-million.
To put this into perspective, MW2 grossed $550-million worldwide in its first five launch days. This figure made it the biggest launch ever in entertainment history, beating out massive scale movies like the recent Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which grossed $394-million.
MW2 replaces Grand Theft Auto IV which grossed $500-million in its first five days.
Activision Blizzard estimates that around 8-million copies of the game were sold in the opening week on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. This is a figure that most large scale AAA releases do not achieve in their entire shelf life.
According to the LA Times, the $200=million development and launch cost is about equal to the average “summer popcorn movie”. The overwhelming portion of the game’s funding went into marketing it, with top designers and agencies used to develop the promotional materials. The controversy which preceded the launch of the game has also been credited with increasing its profile significantly.
According to VGChartz around 55% of unit sales were of the Xbox 360 version of the game. 33% were sold on PS3, and just 12% on PC. Although globally the franchise clearly sells best on console, the situation is different in SA, where an unspecified majority of unit sales of Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) were on PC.
CoD4 sold over 40,000 units in SA, and Megarom expected to exceed these sales in short order. Despite vocal forumites claiming to have canceled their preorders, MW2 was still Megarom’s most preordered title ever.
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