Greetings, and welcome to the Thursday edition of Hey! Look! Listen! I’m your host Oliver Motok, and last Tuesday, I spent nine straight hours playing Modern Warfare 2.
And I plan to play more tonight, so let’s make this hasty, eh? We actually have some decent news to cover tonight, though, so I promise you it’ll be worth your time.
Modern Warfare 2 Sells Nearly Five Million Copies in 24 Hours
Yep, that’s what I said. This, of course, is according to “internal Activision estimates,” so nothing’s OFFICIALLY official until November’s NPD numbers are revealed. But honestly, this isn’t too difficult to believe.
4.7 million copies sold, amounting to $310 million. In 24 hours. And that’s only counting North America and the UK.
Blowing the horn for all it’s worth, Activision is billing this as “the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment.” And frankly, that may not be far from the truth.
MSNBC Tackles Modern Warfare 2’s “Terrorist” Level
With Modern Warfare 2 breaking sales records and whatnot, it’s obviously caught the eye of non-gaming press as well. MSNBC recently aired a segment featuring Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo, in which the now-infamous “terrorist” level of the game is discuss. It’s actually a pretty decent segment; the two chicks manage not to sound entirely ignorant, and Stephen makes his points nicely, while not coming off as overly-defensive. Watch the clip on Kotaku, but beware of spoilers.
Uncharted 2 Sells Over a Million Copies
Sure, this story may look a little puny compared to Modern Warfare 2’s 34287 units in a single DAY, but seeing that Uncharted 2 is still currently my Game of the Year, it always has a place in my column. Phil Rosenberg, SCE’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, boasted the game’s commercial and critical success at today’s BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference. According to him, Naughty Dog’s masterpiece crossed the one million mark last week.
More power to it; the game deserves every copy sold and every penny earned. Now how ’bout they hurry up and fast-track Uncharted 3?
Nintendo’s Wii Back on Top in October
Ugh. It pains me to report this, but apparently that $50 price cut did Nintendo some good after all. After being defeated by the PS3 in September, the Nintendo Wii was back on top for the month of October. Here are the NPD hardware numbers, with data being gathered between 10/4 and 10/31:
- Wii – 506,900
- Nintendo DS – 457,600
- PlayStation 3 – 320,600
- Xbox 360 – 249,700
- PSP – 174,600
- PlayStation 2 – 117,800
The Wii sold only 462,800 units in September, while the PS3 sold 491,800. Fairly drastic month-on-month drop for the PS3, but I imagine we’ll see a similar drop for the Wii this month. As for December? That’s anyone’s ball game.
Ubisoft Claims that Prince of Persia Could Surpass Pirates of the Caribbean
Here’s a classic example of a corporate figure promising too much: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guilmont also spoke at the aforementioned BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference. Unsurprisingly, he mentioned the upcoming Prince of Persia movie. Here’s what he had to say:
“What we hear is that I could be stronger than Pirates (of the Caribbean), which did $2.7 billion dollars. I think this will really help our brand to become a major brand in this industry.”
Yeah… while I’m fairly sure at this point that Bruckheimer’s vision for the Prince will be a profitable one, I can’t quite see the movie bringing in over two billion dollars. Perhaps he was referring to the inevitable film franchise as a whole? Who knows, but anyway around it, he’s talking out of his ass.
That’s all for now, folks! Have a lovely evening, and don’t count Modern Warfare 2 Week out yet. I have an editorial brewing that I’m dying to share with you, and word on the street is that Ethos now has his hands on the game.
‘Till next time!
Well, it’s not like this is particularly unexpected, but newsworthy nonetheless. In the wake of a redesign and a dramatic price drop, the PlayStation 3 managed to beat out the Xbox 360 AND the Wii in the month of September. However, it’s worth noting that Nintendo’s DS remains on the top. Here are the numbers:
