Ben-DutkaGet ready for a surprise.
According to Bloomberg , GameStop president Tony Bartel has revealed that the retailer sold more than 1 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops II at the midnight launch alone.
On top of which, analyst Michael Olson estimates that Treyarch's latest effort moved between 6.5 and 7.2 million units in day-one sales, which would be similar to the first 24-hour haul of last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 . By the way, MW3 has had the biggest launch of the series so far, raking in $775 million in revenue during its first five days of availability in 2011. Only time will tell if Black Ops II will allow Activision to top that number with the latest CoD.
So you have your copy right? If not and you're still on the fence about it, you can read our in-depth review, which is coming very, very soon…
Related Game(s): Call of Duty: Black Ops II
I dont care what anyone says, this helps the industry. This is just crazy though!
I disagree, it has only helped get more people playing games. But the industry as a whole has largely stagnated in the last several years.
Sure we still get gems, but we all know the negative effects this series has had on other games like Final Fantasy, and Resident evil.
It isn't the games fault more so the idiot devs who are trying to duplicate the success and sales numbers that cod gets.
But I think its bad for the industry, it showed other publishers that you can annualize and keep your quarterly profits up, that you can charge ridiculous prices for map packs and other DLC, it showed that you can hardly innovate year after year and make big profits, and it has made a lot of people scared to release games around this time as well as kind of put a stop to a lot of risk taking and creativity that used to be in the industry, annnnd has caused most developers/publishers to target this large demographic which leaves most of the old school/hardcore gamers out to dry.
I think it has helped in that now its not socially weird to play games and everyone excepts people who game. But the actually industry and a lot of old school gamers are feeling the consequences of this.
^ What this man just said.
There's only 2 franchises that come to mind that are successful at annualization. CoD and AC. So no it doesn't show that every game can be successful. It shows that with a formula that those devs have created there is potential to. If another game can't do it, that's on the developer.
Now my point is a much broader perspective. Any game that sells this much or even a game that sells in the 2-6 millions is successful and helps the industry.
You can look at it either way, doesn't matter to me, but larger sales of anything is good for the industry.
I guess my point is, while I agree with you that some developers are trying way to hard to cater to something they have no business trying to because of CoD's success, that's not that perspective I'm focusing on.
I don't know about you, but I've got a Library full of other games I enjoy more than CoD. And that library consists of games that consistently score higher than CoD in reviews, in many different genres, that released this generation, most after CoD: MW. So there is no trend going on, not every developer is trying to create games liked CoD. It's the greedy ones, that are obviously trying to reach a broader audience. And again that's not a bad thing. It's good for the industry, problem is they just don't get it done.
Last edited by bigrailer19 on 11/15/2012 12:33:01 AM
I don't think it's good for the industry that other games get watered down. Square Enix mentions CoD a lot and look where they are.
I 100% agree with you Big. Every single word. We simply can't put the blame on someones failure on somebody elses success. It's just not fair.
If Square Enix want to lower themselves to simply be bleak copycats of others success, then let them be so, and let them fail hard. They deserve it.
We see the same in every other kind of entertainment too. When a musician have success we get ten copy-cats producers who try to imitate his sound. Whenever there is a blockbuster movie there are guaranteed to be launched a handful of lesser budget versions of that same setting.
Last edited by Beamboom on 11/15/2012 3:40:44 AM
I just fail to see how large sales of a game are helping the industry. It is only helping that dev/publisher relationship and to be honest ruins things in the long run.
When you understand about publicly traded publishers like EA and Activision you can get an idea why huge sales for these two companies is a terrible thing and here is why.
They need to try and keep up their quarterly earnings, this is for the shareholders. Now everytime they have a quarterly where their profits are up they have to BEAT that in order to be "successful" even if they still make profits.
This corporate mentality is what has brought us the wonderful on disc DLC, day one DLC, expensive map packs, cut from launch DLC, and just DLC in general.
These companies need to find more ways to make money from us in order to keep profits up or else they fail and I have seen year after year more DLC popping up on the PSN than ever before and its just getting worse and worse. Sure some of it is fluff but some stuff you can just tell was cut from the game, or held back or even on disc. Now one can argue that "well the game felt complete without the DLC so I don't feel ripped off." However the problem with that mentality is where does it end? Remember when RPGs used to offer 60+ hours? When even shooters and action games had 10+ hour campaigns? Things have been slowly getting scaled back and then sold back to us a couple months later AND they know this works because of two reasons, it gets people who have the game spending more so if they really want all the DLC the game ends up costing 120 bucks, and there is a trend that when DLC releases along side adds game sales for that game go up.
THIS is what is wrong with the industry and CoD has just reinforced that this works and should be done. Now CoD doesn't rip people off too much with DLC like other companies because they have WoW as a nice piggy bank, but EA, Capcom, Konami, THQ and 2K are all doing this and I'm shocked that only a small amount of gamers see this for what it is.
The mainstream gaming industry is either going to crash again, or become so diluted only two or three big publishers will be left and everything else will be kickstarted, indy or free to play.
This is why I don't see how this is good for the industry. Its only good for the people who were made fun of for being a nerdy gamer(myself included). Otherwise all I have seen is stagnation, fear of taking risks, the rise of unethical/sketchy journalism(IGN), and more ways to nickel and dime people than I thought was popular.
Sorry for the rant.
Last edited by xenris on 11/15/2012 12:46:53 PM
Anyone know if there will be Blops 2 bundles? My friend wants to set up a two-PS3 zombie killing station in his home.
Some BLOPS PC version buyer's are not too happy ATM because their secondary disc accidentally contains Mass Effect 2, not BLOPS.
Video here,
(Note: NSFW or around kids)
http://allthumbsgaming.com/2012/11/13/mass-effect-accidentally-included-with-black-ops-2/
Yea… well… Bioware is giving them the Mass Effect Trilogy free. Atleast a fraction of the people with the ME2 copy.
lol, how inept of them.
not really a surprise.
it was quite obvious this was going to do this well, especially that its THE most preordered game in the industries HISTORY!
so whats the opposite of a "surprise"?
spent a fair bit of time with the campaign now and again i have to ask when did uniqueness become illegal in this industry?
sigh.
the only reason ive liked treyarchs games is because they have been the polar opposite to IW, and the stereotypical bro ho military shooter.
so they did BO2, first time they have ever done a sequel, and a sequel to my favorite COD game, and threw everything that made them so successful out the window!
sigh.
take the treyarch symbol off the game, remove black ops, and i could swear this was made by IW!
for f*cks sake, seriously, when did uniqueness become illegal?
everything just has to be a clone these days.
maybe this is all part of the mans plot to take over the world!
oh god arnie was right!!!!!!!!!!
Give the people what they want – FPS games.
Its bad for the few of you who like lessor genres for sure.
Heh heh heh (evil laugh)