14 DAY TRIAL // The Call of Duty XP convention held over the recent Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles, California, was a huge success, according to Activision, which said that the event was the second most viewed one in the history of its partner, LiveStream.
Activision's Call of Duty series is probably one of the biggest in the gaming industry, at least in terms of profit, so you can imagine the company had big expectations for the recent Call of Duty XP event, which offered fans, both attending and those viewing online, a great experience focused on the new Call of Duty products like Modern Warfare 3 or Elite.
According to Activision's publishing boss, Eric Hirshberg, the response from fans and the Call of Duty community was overwhelming, especially since it's still not done factoring in the metrics from the various channels it's been monitoring.
"The response has been pretty overwhelming – it was a terrific success, from both the standpoint of the people who attended in person and also our strategy to make it a connected, digital event for our fans worldwide. We had some pretty amazing metrics. Livestream, the company that broadcast the event for us, indicated that it's the second most viewed event in history – the first being the Royal Wedding and I think the third was a President Obama speech. So that's a pretty remarkable statistic," Hirshberg told Industry Gamers.
"We were also a global trended topic on Twitter during the first 24 hours of the event, and a lot of the metrics are still coming in so we're doing a deep dive on the investment. But we've reached our goal of getting our fans to really engage the game... The average viewing time of the keynote speech was 30 minutes, and that's the kind of deep engagement that's very hard to get with a TV commercial or paid media," he said.
While Hirshberg couldn't say for sure just how many people viewed the Call of Duty XP opening ceremony, more than 8,500 people visited the actual conference, and impressed both regular attendants as well as media.
"If we were going to put the Call of Duty name on an event, it had to set a standard, and people seemed pretty blown away with the event," he added.
The Activision executive declined to confirm a second edition of Call of Duty XP next year, but he admitted this success has demonstrated the appetite of consumers for such conventions.