News
-
Specialty retailer believes Activision’s latest Call of Duty title will top last year’s record-smashing Infinity Ward-developed hit.
Activision released the Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in November 2009, and it was kind of a big deal. Within 24 hours, the game had sold 4.7 million units in the US, Canada, and UK alone, generating more than $330 million in the process. By the end of its first week, the game had smashed records across a variety of media, as the sales juggernaut passed the $550 million marker and eventually pulled in more than $1 billion.
Last night, thousands of retailers across the globe began selling Modern Warfare 2’s follow-up, the Treyarch-developed Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the largest of those specialty shops believes Activision will be pleased with the results. Speaking to Gamasutra, GameStop merchandising senior VP Bob McKenzie said Black Ops’ launch will eclipse that of Modern Warfare 2.
“I think it’s a loyal fan base for the franchise and [Activision has] done a great job of really getting out in front of it and really making this an event,” McKenzie said. “I’m convinced it’ll be the biggest launch that we’ve ever had, that the industry has ever seen Each one of these, they get so much bigger that you kind of look at it thinking each one can’t be bigger than the prior year. But really, for over 12 weeks we’ve been tracking at a number that surpassed last year’s.”
McKenzie also noted that he does not believe consumers will be deterred by the fact that Treyarch is developing this year’s Call of Duty title, and not the destabilized Infinity Ward outfit.
“You look at the history of Call of Duty, and they’ve had the dual studios for so many years that this is not out of sequence,” he said. “The consumer is used to and accepting of the fact that Treyarch does one and then it’s [Infinity Ward] doing the next. I think that if that cycle was broken then I’d have a little more hesitation. But, again, everything is in line.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops is now available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, and PC. For more information, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Black Ops to top Modern Warfare 2 launch – GameStop” was posted by Tom Magrino on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 11:03:30 -0800 -
Who remembers Rampage?
Sony has confirmed a PlayStation Network release for Eat Them!, the latest game from Bristol-based developer FluffyLogic.
The game’s producer told the PlayStation Blog that the Rampage-esque romp lets players “create their own giant monster which they then use to smash, crash and munch their way though the city. The monster is people-powered, so eating folk is a prerequisite of keeping your monster in full-on destruction mode.”
You can expect “customisable monster creation and lots and lots of smashing things. The player has the option of single-player and split-screen multiplayer, head-to-head and co-operative missions.”
-
Retailer: Halo: Reach “biggest surprise”.
Sony’s PSP strategy has been the biggest let-down of the year, according to top US games retailer GameStop.
Senior VP of merchandising and marketing Bob McKenzie told Eurogamer, “If I were to pick a disappointment the only thing would be looking at the number of titles that have launched on the PSP format compared to the prior year.
“I think Sony did a great job two years ago in terms of coming out with a pretty good line-up of PSP offerings and I didn’t see that breadth of titles this year. And it’s still pretty meaningful to consumers.”
-
Sources: Sledgehammer looking to the stars.
The next game in the Call of Duty series will be set in space, industry sources have claimed.
Gamasutra report, “Industry sources say Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty will be set in the future and feature, for lack of a better term, space marines – a very big step for a franchise that has historically based itself on realism.”
Activision’s enormously successful FPS franchise seems to have finally turned its back on its traditional World War II setting with this year’s Cold War-set Black Ops.
-
GeForce GTX 580 released today offers improved performance for PC games.Graphics chip maker Nvidia has today announced the release of its latest high-end graphics chip. The GeForce GTX 580 GPU is the latest iteration of Nvidia’s Fermi architecture, following the launch of the GTX 480 in March.
-
GeForce GTX 580 released today offers improved performance for PC games.Graphics chip maker Nvidia has today announced the release of its latest high-end graphics chip. The GeForce GTX 580 GPU is the latest iteration of Nvidia’s Fermi architecture, following the launch of the GTX 480 in March.
-
“I’ve never been first in anything.”
Shortly before midnight last night, 350 people stood queuing outside the flagship HMV store on Oxford Street, London.
Why were they there? To buy Call of Duty: Black Ops, an 8/10 game.
Imran Chowdhury was first in line. He doesn’t normally do this kind of thing, but he happened upon a newspaper ad that day for the midnight launch and thought he’d pop along “early in the morning” – 11am – to see what was what.
-
Ellie, Oli and the Toms rake over Kinect, Call of Duty and NFS.
This is it. This is the apex of 2010. Everything else is downhill after this, and everything before this has been leading up to this moment and exists purely to serve it. We’re not talking about the Eurogamer.net Podcast #44, obviously – we’re talking about this week. The launch of Kinect. The launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Well, that’s what you’re supposed to think anyway. Whether or not you do (we’re quite partial to the week Ellie got married or the one where podcast host Tom Champion ended up in an ice bath at a music festival), this week’s podcast is mostly about these two titanic events – along with discussion of another great game reviewed on the site today, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
Stream the Eurogamer.net Podcast:
-
But avatars and costumes included.
There’s no plushy Sackboy toy snuggled inside the Collector’s Edition of LittleBigPlanet 2 – the treats this time are virtual.
They are five PSN avatars and seven LBP2 costumes. Those costumes are Toy Story 3’s Alien, Tron: Legacy’s Clu, The Muppets’ Great Gonzo and Even More Animals’ Crocodile, Vulture, Cobra and Mandrill.
Pictures of them can be found on the European PlayStation blog.
-
Virtual world-building platform looks to OTOY’s streaming technology to provide easier access.TechCrunch is reporting that Hawaii-based developer Avatar Reality will bring its Blue Mars platform to cloud-based servers operated by US-based company OTOY next year.