International tracking firm OTX has reported survey findings which indicate that by dropping the “Call of Duty” title from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2, Activision has effectively reduced the game’s brand profile awareness by 20%.
Nick Williams who runs the GamePlan Insights division of OTX had this to say:
“Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title.”
Williams goes on to say “However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed ‘Call of Duty’ from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.”
Following E3, OTX revealed that Modern Warfare 2 came in sixth in its “game awareness index” . The game comes in behind Assassin’s Creed 2, Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III, New Super Mario Bros and Halo 3: ODST which took the number one spot.
Interestingly Modern Warfare came in at second place when it was previously known as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Although Modern Warfare is sacrificing brand awareness by dropping the Call of Duty name, according to OTX it is still enjoying the highest level of “pre-order intent”.
While many industry analysts have made predictions over the past few weeks that Modern Warfare 2 will go on to become the top selling game of 2009, it remains to be seen whether ditching the Call of Duty brand was a good move from Activision.
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