Modern Warfare 2 pre-order sales are failing hard

[shio]

MontanaHatchet said:

shio said:

MontanaHatchet said:
1. Shio, I'm pretty sure you've been proven wrong about that 8-10 milllion figure before (it might have even been by ioi), and you still try to convince people of it. Give us a break.

2. Vlad, stop trolling. Consoles are putting out great games all the time, and your fanboyism (I love that word) must prevent you from seeing that.

3. Zenfoldor, stop acting like your opinion is fact, or what you say is absolute. You still do it, and you still get owned.

4. People will still buy this game, even with this petition. These same people will get over their hissyfit and buy the game anyways once the hype train starts.

1. That never happened. No one has been able to prove that COD4 didn't or won't sell 8-10 millions. On the other hand I also haven't proved the contrary, but atleast I gave a much more rational and informed response than the ones against me. COD4 just peeked in at 10th a few days ago on Steam, as it still does every now and then. And is also the second best-selling Activision game on Steam right now, only below MW2 (which means COD4 was best selling Activision game until a few days ago)

3. Zenfoldor does like to get himself in that position.

4.4. People will still buy ofcourse, but less than before. COD4 dominated Steam for months, so the fact that MW2 couldn't even get Top Spot as soon as the pre-orders came means that it is suffering from something. But the most important part is that the lack of dedicated servers will do more damage the longer the game is out, rather than the release time. Without DS, the decline of built communities, no mods and overall worse experience will deeply affect word-of-mouth, and word-of-mouth is HUGE on PC.

1. It was this thread. You have some good evidence, but a lot of your arguments consist of piecing together downloadable charts and old press releases until it sort of fits.

4. I doubt a large amount of people will refuse to buy the game. Modern Warfare 2 has been running on an immense hype train for a year now, and a lot of people will still buy even with this change. I expect the same for Starcraft 2 and LAN.

1. Oh, that thread, thanks for reminding me! That thread started with people claiming that COD4 sold less than 2 millions on PC, and I stepped up by posting a strong, reasonable argument:

"Anyone that believes that COD4 PC sold less than 2 millions must be tripping. Are you seriously telling me that COD4 PC sold LESS than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (which sold over 2 millions, and that figure is almost a year old)??? Come on, Stalker almost never showed up on Top Charts, while COD4 PC DOMINATED the Top Charts for AGES!!!!

Even now COD4 is showing on charts: currently 9th on Steam and 12th on Impulse, two of the most popular DD services.

I have many times debated about the numbers from Activision, and have made extensive posts about it. Here's my reasoning as to why COD4 PC could even be a 10 million seller: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2436222"

ioi then said that they would count every sale of a game (retail or DD) together, which is false. WoW box sales DON'T COUNT as boxed sales, and are bundled into the MMO revenue. And, like most companies do, Activision probably bundles digital sales with the distribution revenue or some other place, NOT the PC revenue (but I'm not sure about this one).
And that was the only "decent" argument in the thread, since the rest were pretty much only saying that "COD4 didn't sell well because there's alot of piracy on PC", which is pathetic at best. A game can sell amazing and still be pirated alot.

My reply to ioi:

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.

After some other guy posted a link about Stalker having sold 2 millions, everyone stopped posting against me, and most people's reaction was "wtf?! COD should be selling way more than Stalker! Then COD4 should be way above 2 millions"

 

4. Word-of-mouth is a big thing on PC. Especially when less than 15% of sales of most PC game are made in their first month after release. Another factor is that there are alot more options on PC to buy from, so a PC gamer can ignore MW2 and still have a bunch of other games to try.