Analyst: Modern Warfare 3 Can Sell More than 20 Million Copies

Michael Pachter, who is the outspoken analyst who is watching the video games industry for research firm Wedbush Morgan, has announced that he believes the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from Infinity Ward and Activision Blizzard might reach the sales mark of 20 million copies when it launches later in the year.

In a new note to investors, the analyst has said that Call of Duty: Black Ops, which launched last year and became the best-selling game of 2010, posted “mind-boggling” sales mainly because of the “network effect created by the game’s remarkable 17 million weekly active unique online players.”

Modern Warfare 3 has a chance to perform better than that mainly because of the fact that Infinity Ward, which created the first two games bearing the same name, is handling development.

The analyst believes that Battlefield 3, a game that is being created by DICE and will be published by Electronic Arts, will also perform very well at retail, moving more than 6.5 million copies, and will be a strong competitor for the new Call of Duty.

Despite this, the Activision game will continue to be the best in its genre regardless of the negative reaction that some gamers might have to the newly announced Elite subscription service.

Pachter also believes that the slow start of the Nintendo 3DS handheld will mean that overall console sales for the summer of this year will be down when compared to the same period of 2010.

Pachter believes that, as the sales numbers for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony decline, the two companies might seriously think about cutting their price.

For the week of June, the analyst predicts that the coming NPD Group sales figures will be dominated by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3DS, Duke Nukem Forever, L.A. Noire and Infamous 2.