Tracking firm OTX is claiming that it's not just the Call of Duty name that Infinity Ward has lost with its upcoming Modern Warfare 2. According to research, the title drop has also resulted in a loss of brand awareness, with the game now falling from the radar of 20% of American consumers.
"Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title," explains OTX.
"However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed Call of Duty from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic."
I can certainly see why the decision was made to drop the CoD moniker. After all, it looks better for a publisher to have two huge shooter franchises rather than just one, and it's good to differentiate between the work of Infinity Ward and Treyarch. Of course, it now looks as if evil publisher Activision will have to market Modern Warfare 2 like never before if it hopes to be as successful without the CoD name backing it up.
If one thing Activision is good at (apart from being evil), it's marketing. I'm fairly certain MW2 will get its own brand awareness soon enough.
Contest:
3:00 PM on 06.24.2009
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I expect sales figures to be insane, as you said Acti-bastards certainly know how to market a game.
And lets face it, it's gonna rock (poor choice of word but you know what I mean!)
Regardless of my previous stupidity, I refuse to buy into this. You really think dropping COD will hurt sales? Like dexter said... word of mouth will spread quickly.
well played friend. My sentiments exactly
MW2, whatever they want to call it, is gonna sell like hot cakes with crack cocaine on top.
I think in the long run, they are smart to differentiate the COD series from the MW series - they really are different games (and frankly I would only want to buy the Infinity Ward series anyways as I was very disappointed with World at War game).
... it won't take people long to catch on.
All gamers in the U.S.? Really? Nobody asked me. How big is this "representative group of gamers in the U.S." and how were they chosen? How is all this tracked?
Sorry, my knee-jerk reaction is to be skeptical of weird statistics offered by companies with acronyms for their names.
And that research that they run was BIAS.
If you're name wasn't partially related to Radiohead's album Kid A I might not have any reason to talk to you.
Lord help us when we reach CoD7!
Then everyone in the destructoid comments insults them.
@whowhatwherehow, your mum only knows about CoD because you throw internet sensation hissy fits when she cancels your live account.
Most PS3, 360, and PC owners will have this game in their game collection.
good one!