14 DAY TRIAL // Mike Hickey, who is an analyst for Janco Partners, has offered quite an interesting prediction, saying that Modern Warfare 2, the Infinity Ward developed and Activision Blizzard published sequel, would become the biggest game release of 2009, selling no less than 11.1 million units from November 10 until the end of the year and generating 338 million dollars in its first day on sales.
The prediction related to Modern Warfare 2 has also prompted him to designate the stock of Activision as being highly desirable with a price target of 17 dollars.
Hickey released a statement which said that “We believe Modern Warfare 2 will likely be the largest video game release for 2009. For the Company’s fiscal Q409 period (Dec. ending), we anticipate the sell through to consumers of 11.1 million units for an estimated retail value of $803 million and sell-in approximating 12.4 million units, for an approximated sales value of $666 million (we assume demand is 90% of supply).”
The analyst believes that the main reason for the potential record sales of Modern Warfare 2 is the increase in the install base of the Xbox 360 and of the PlayStation 3, consoles on which the shooter will be released.
Mike Hickey is predicting that the game will sell more than 2 million units on the PC and that overall the sales of Modern Warfare 2 will be significantly bigger than those of the first game in the new series. The first Modern Warfare is still registering a record number of people playing it, using both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, and they are probably going to be early adopters of the fresh title.
Also, he estimates that, until launch, Modern Warfare 2 will have 3.2 million pre-orders, with most of them coming from the United States. As it is launched, he also expects to see the new Infinity Ward title become one of the most played online games.