One of the biggest games releasing this upcoming week so obviously going to be raking in the big sales. Of course for the PS3 and 360 it will have to live in the shadow of Resistance 2 and Gears 2 but it should have that many problems. Alright Call of Duty 3 sold approximately 3 million with incomplete data for all 3 7th gen versions. While COD4 sold over 10 million on the PS3 and 360. Even with the completed data for all the versions of the 3rd one it's clear COD4 became much larger series with the 4th one.
So where does this leave us with the 5th one. Brand is obviously huge for the title. Although the 4th one skipped out on the Wii, it's coming back to it with online play in a desperately starved console of online shooters. So how do you think this will sell first week, by the end of the year, and rough estimate on lifetime.
Personally I'm having problems trying to generate just how large this title will be especially on Wii. Wii owners don't have much of a choice this holiday season for big games to get aside from ToS 2 and AC: City Folk so they'll be looking to these multi plat games aside from past released titles. It could mean the title seels really well on the platform or it could be skipped for other titles. On 360 it's guaranteed to do pretty large numbers but in the shadow of Gears 2 it's hard to think it could replicate COD4 numbers. Same scenario for PS3 just in the shadow of Resistance 2. So here's my very rough guesses:
First Week
360: 900k
PS3: 400k
Wii: 225k
End of the Year
360: 2.50 million
PS3: 1.50 million
Wii: 800k
Lifetime
360: 4.00 million
PS3: 2.25 million
Wii: 1.75 million
Total of 3: 8.00 million
Obviously will still be a large property but no where near as large as that of COD4. But I wouldn't doubt all 3 versions going platinum, 360 and PS3 by the end of the year and Wii somewhere by early 2009. I also feel CoD: WaW on Wii will severely help the success of The Conduit as it gains somewhat of a shooter base because of it. But as I said it's really hard to predict the Wii version's sales simply because the brand isn't tied to it right now and it'll need to gain that when it launches and survives this holiday on the platform. And I only see this happening simply due to lack of competition from too many other titles.
