Activision's and Treyarch's big bed for the holiday launch season is
Call of Duty: Black Ops, the shooter that will parse the various secret operations performed by the United States and its allies during the Cold War. The game is set to arrive on November 9 on the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the Xbox 360 from the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the PC. A version for the Nintendo DS, which is quite different from the main game, is also being prepared. And recent information coming from analysts is saying that the game is seeing more pre orders than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had at the same point during last year.
Evan Wilson, who is an analyst watching the video game industry for Pacific Crest, has updated his sales expectations for Call of Duty: Black Ops to 12 million units, which is quite a hefty increase from the 10 million he was talking about earlier in the year. It seems that the decision to increase the expected sales for the new first person shooter has come after retailers pointed out that there are more pre orders for Black Ops than expected.
Still Pacific Crest is not expecting to see the new title reach the 16 million units in sales that Modern Warfare 2 managed last year. The main reasons are tougher competition in the FPS area, coupled with a smaller marketing push and the image problems associated with the Infinity Ward – Activision public scandal and its fallout.
During the fall
Call of Duty: Black Ops will face competition from Medal of Honor, the revived franchise from Electronic Arts, which is coming to modern times and the battlefield of Afghanistan, with the multiplayer element handled by DICE. EA has publicly stated that it wants to take the first person shooter crown back and the battle between Black Ops and Medal of Honor will be one to watch.
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