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gergroy on 06 August 2009
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shio said:
ioi said:

@ssj12 - I don't agree. When Activision say 14 million copies of COD4:MW they will be referring to retail copies and downloads - they both count as a "sale" for Activision.

Also most publishers are counting dowload sales - it is just that the sales are relatively small in most cases.

When Activision list total sales, top sellers etc it will be inclusive of everything - retail, MMO, dowloads, expansion packs - every way they they have made money basically.

Almost no publisher releases figures of digital sales because that only undermines their relations with retailers, or because they have too much at stake on retail. The only big publisher I can think of that talks of digital sales is EA, but that might be because EA is the major publisher that is currently pushing the digital and online business more than any other major publisher.

And is false that when Activision talks of figures, they're for worldwide or includes digital sales. When they said that COD4 sold 7 millions, everyone thought that it was a worldwide figure, but infact it was a figure from only about 6 countries, which were tracked by NPD, Charttrack and GFK. They didn't include dozens of countries, nearly all of them PC-centric markets. They didn't include a single country from eastern europe, where Stalker sold 1 million.

That 7 million figure actually helped in knowing how much COD4 it had sold on PC, in those markets. I had estimated that around 2.2 millions from those 7 millions were from the PC version, and that didn't even include dozens of PC-centric markets or digital sales. http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2436222

There's just NO WAY that COD4, which dominated PC Retail charts for months, dominated Digital charts for ages, and is still selling even now, NO WAY that it only sold around Stalker, a game that did not even appear more than a couple of times on retail charts and barely set foot on top digital charts.

COD4 sold ABOVE the level of Sims 2 and World of Warcraft in it's first year, and even now it still has strong legs, especially considering it hasn't even dropped in price.

Zlejedi said:
im_sneaky said:
I would find it VERY hard to believe Cod4 pc and stalker selled in the same ballapark. that just doesn't seem right. I won't give a number but... all my intuition points to 2m being WAY too low.Cod4 had mad legs AND a great start.... 2m is way too low.


COD actually is not that big on PC.

I can tell you that Stalker had much bigger hype in Poland then any of pc versions of COD.

Also on PC market a lot of sales are made through various budget reeditions or collections while COD4 has been kept at RRP for ages.

 

Call of Duty is easily one of the biggest FPS franchises on PC, on par with Counter-Strike and Half-Life.

Almost no one ever heard of Stalker until it actually came out. If there was hype it was probably only in eastern europe, where the stalker franchise is much more known.

ioi said:
@ssj12 - I'm not sure what you're saying.

Publishers don't release figures for 95% of retail games, the only ones that get featured in financial reports are the games doing 2-3m+. They are picked out as examples of titles that have been successful.

Battlefield 1943 had a huge opening two weeks ago - by far the biggest ever for a downaload game (it took ~40% of all XBLA sales for July with just a weeks worth of sales). It was reported because it was a success.

Download sales for most download games don't get reported in financial reports seperately since they don't normally sell that much, the same reason why 100s of retail games never have sales revealed.

There are more PC games being bought on Digital Distribution than on Retail, right now.


lol, there you go with your 2007 article again :)  You think that, possibly, they may have not had worldwide numbers yet because the game had only been out a month?  LOL, seriously Shio, why don't you looking at some current numbers.  Just because that article (that was written a month after the game came out) only listed those tracking firms numbers does not mean that every subsequent report is like that.  In fact, the farther we get away from the release of the game the more accurate Activisions numbers are.