Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter has become the prophet of the gaming world, predicting the successes and failures of everything from new consoles to new games. While Modern Warfare 3 does seem like a safe horse to back as the most highly anticipated game of the year, Pachter thinks Activision Blizzard can continue its run of outdoing itself.
If Modern Warfare 3 outsells Black Ops, it will be the third consecutive year the series has smashed the entertainment sales record for Activision – and the wizard believes it can.
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will likely be the year’s top-selling game. If MW3 receives strong review scores, (which shouldn’t be a problem judging by past scores, and the “blockbuster effect”) it should at least match predecessor Black Ops’ sales (over 25 million units) due to the network effect, with compression of sales into 2011 likely,” he stated in an investor note.
IndustryGamers followed up with him, asking him specifically about whether he thinks Call of Duty will again be breaking the record, to which he responded, “I do. I see compression of sales for virtually every game, would bet that they are 10% higher over the same time frame, so $1.1 billion in the first six weeks.”
The first few weeks of sales are of course the most important, but for Call of Duty the real test may be the first few days – Black Ops accrued $650 million in only 5 days, with six weeks required to hit the $1 billion mark.
Pachter also thinks Activision’s new Call of Duty: Elite service is going to have a significant influence on sales, saying, “We expect the Call of Duty: Elite premium membership plan to be very popular with CoD’s hard core gamers. Elite is being bundled at a $10 discount with the underlying game, which may accelerate as many as 3 – 4 million subscriptions into 2011.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 releases November 8th, so we won’t have to wait long to find out if Pachter’s predictions come true.
Pachter predicts MW3 to break Black Ops records << Comments and views
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