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Forums - Sales - COD 4 Pc sold less than 2 million units? Piracy is to blame?

ssj12 on 06 August 2009
Slimebeast said:
shio said:
Slimebeast said:
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.

Yes but PC retail market is small. Crisis sold only 70k in it's first month in the US according to NPD. What was the number for CoD 4 PC, 100k?

You mean that the first months sales in USA (right before Christmas) accounts for only 1% of CoD4's ww lifetime sales? Quite ridiculous.

Crysis sold 1 million in 45 days, and reached 1.5 millions in less than 6 months. It's probably above 2 millions now, and who knows it might sell over 3 millions lifetime.

 


Shipped.

No it was sold because a decent chunk of the sales were packaged with GPUs.



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averyblund on 06 August 2009

One thing I find bizarre between the STALKER and COD4 numbers is the emphasis on multiplayer and thus usefulness of piracy. STALKER is very much a single player game and thus makes an easy torrent. On the other hand COD4 while having a great single player campaign, is certainly better known for its online components.

On the other hand I don't see why Activision wouldn't report these numbers when they are trying to show off their sales if the were not accurate.



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Aion on 06 August 2009

It's believeable, but the argument CoD4 sold 8 million is hard to believe.



 

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Slimebeast on 06 August 2009
ssj12 said:
Slimebeast said:
shio said:
Slimebeast said:
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.

Yes but PC retail market is small. Crisis sold only 70k in it's first month in the US according to NPD. What was the number for CoD 4 PC, 100k?

You mean that the first months sales in USA (right before Christmas) accounts for only 1% of CoD4's ww lifetime sales? Quite ridiculous.

Crysis sold 1 million in 45 days, and reached 1.5 millions in less than 6 months. It's probably above 2 millions now, and who knows it might sell over 3 millions lifetime.

 


Shipped.

No it was sold because a decent chunk of the sales were packaged with GPUs.


Not really.

Of the first 1 million shipment I estimate only 4-500,000 were actually sold. Then they shipped another 500,000 (so 1.5 mill shipped in 6 months could be announced) but these 500k were bundled with grafix cards. Then Crisis ended up in bargain bins, so today probably most of the remaining 500,000 from the first shipment could be sold to customers. And add a couple of 100.000 from DD (through EA store?) and you got barely 1,5 mill sold lifetime of which 500,000 is GPU bundles.



Mudface on 06 August 2009

Crysis can poke it. It's a graphics demo with a crap game behind it. It shouldn't have sold at all and that it did is ridiculous.

I do like how you're glossing over VGChartz' complete lack of knowledge of the DD scene though.



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Slimebeast on 06 August 2009
Mudface said:
Crysis can poke it. It's a graphics demo with a crap game behind it. It shouldn't have sold at all and that it did is ridiculous.

I do like how you're glossing over VGChartz' complete lack of knowledge of the DD scene though.


Huh? How?



shio on 06 August 2009
Slimebeast said:
ssj12 said:
Slimebeast said:
shio said:

Crysis sold 1 million in 45 days, and reached 1.5 millions in less than 6 months. It's probably above 2 millions now, and who knows it might sell over 3 millions lifetime.

 


Shipped.

No it was sold because a decent chunk of the sales were packaged with GPUs.


Not really.

Of the first 1 million shipment I estimate only 4-500,000 were actually sold. Then they shipped another 500,000 (so 1.5 mill shipped in 6 months could be announced) but these 500k were bundled with grafix cards. Then Crisis ended up in bargain bins, so today probably most of the remaining 500,000 from the first shipment could be sold to customers. And add a couple of 100.000 from DD (through EA store?) and you got barely 1,5 mill sold lifetime of which 500,000 is GPU bundles.

It doesn't really matter because if it's shipped it means it doesn't include digital sales. But the biggest part is that the game still sold 500k after it reached 1 million, which tells that Crysis was still being sought and bought.

Since then, Crysis came out on Steam and several other digital services, and recently the Maximum Edition was released on Retail. Crysis didn't stop selling. It is currently EA's 2nd and 7th Best Selling game on Steam, above Spore, Red Alert 3, etc...http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Electronic%20Arts/



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Mudface on 06 August 2009

Read ioi's comments on the first page. And stop with the ridiculous multi-quoting. COD4 for PC is never going to sell 10 million. shio's wrong on that, but he is spot on with his comments on DD sales.



Orca_Azure on 06 August 2009

shio is right on this one



Stan85 on 06 August 2009
gergroy said:
Mudface said:
shio said:

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

Yep.

I disagree with a lot of your last post- COD 4 sold very well, but it isn't a Half Life/ Sims/ WoW seller by any means, and it won't get anywhere near 10 million sales- but I'd agree totally with the quoted statement, given the figures I posted earlier.

Frankly, I'm utterly amazed that the owner of a site dedicated to video game sales is so completely out of touch with the size of the digital download market.

lol, or maybe you are out of touch on the size of the digital distribution market.  ioi has a lot more data and experience in this area than we do and I think he would know better than us.  Also, he isn't the only one that thinks that.  NPD came out and said that digital distribution only acounted for about 5% of the gaming industry. 

Now, if you include piracy in digital distribution, than it might be as big as you think, but the people that actually pay for digital downloads are still pretty minor.

Agree,DD is very small and counts to those who don`t want to go to a gaming store.

But DD distribution is no match to torrent distribution,wich is free and used more and more these days.