When I wrote my article for the site, this was the most controversial piece. I called Call of Duty 4 the Halo Killer. I stand by that statement, and I'll address the points as to why. Some of these were previously mentioned by others in this thread.
1. COD4 has outsold Halo 3 across all of it's available platforms, and by quite a few million. It has been played by more gamers. It is thus a bigger game. We don't even know the PC sales for the game, but I can venture a guess they at least match the PS3 sales, if not surpass them.
2. The argument that Halo 3 would have sold more if multiplatform is flawed. Halo 3 was a system seller for Xbox 360. Had it been multiplatform, it's advertising budget would have been miniscule to what it ended up as under Microsoft's wing. Give me one third party publisher that would have marketed the game as strenuous as MS did. Done racking your brain? No answer huh? That's because there isn't one. Even COD4 didn't have that kind of advertising budget, so Activision is out of the question. Halo being a high end, well marketed, well made piece of software adds to it's prestige, ad taking that from it, along with it's massive advertising budget would only hurt or at best match it's current sales, but would hardly surpass them.
3. As previously mentioned, COD sells well as a yearly release, with two seperate teams alternating years. Halo takes approximately 3 years to make with one team. Any way you shake it, COD can pull in more sales and profit with the way it's being handled. There is always the possibility of a backlash over time, ala Tony Hawk, or a general spiraling interest in shooters, but things look pretty rosy on the horizon for the series. There is no evidence to insinuate that there is a declining interest in the series. Look at World at War. It's the bastard step child of the series and is performing remarkably well across it's platforms.
4. Halo 3 was purchased off of pre-release hype. It had front loaded sales and then decent legs going down the stretch. It functioned exactly as a well marketed, desireable product should. COD4 was purchased off of good word of mouth. It had a significantly lower opening, all platforms included, and went on to outsell Halo 3 by a lot. This was done because of player to player recommendations. There is proof in player numbers also. COD4 was played online more than Halo 3 for quite a few months, even with less sales.
5. This is more of a question but imagine if the reverse were to be reality. What if Call of Duty series was the new 360 exclusive and Halo was the multiplat? How do you figure each would perform? My opinion is that COD would be an even stronger system seller under Microsoft's endless advertising budget and Halo would perform equal to it's single platform sales across three platforms with Activision's budget.
That's all folks.
Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.
