The Removal of Call Of Duty Makes Modern Warfare 2 Less Known

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest series of video games currently owned by Activision. It has seen a lot of success, especially with its latest two titles, CoD 4: Modern Warfare, and CoD: World at War, each managing to sell a lot of units and making the brand even more known across the world.

But as gamers were eagerly anticipating the official announcement of the next title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Activision announced that it would drop the CoD moniker and release it purely as Modern Warfare 2.

It seems that this decision has had a pretty big impact on the brand recognition of the new game, at least according to tracking firm OTX, which revealed to Gamasutra the results of a few recent surveys regarding the upcoming title.

“Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” said the company's Nick Williams. “More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title. However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed 'Call of Duty' from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.”

Even though a lot of gamers don't recognize the next title because it doesn't bear the CoD brand, their purchase intent is still quite high, according to a few recent statistics charted by a few firms, including OTX.

“Despite this dramatic drop in awareness, the purchase intent for Modern Warfare 2 remains very strong. Purchase intent still ranks about four times above average. In our latest charts based on the last four weeks of data, Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360 ranks as the sixth most anticipated title. The intensity of the purchase intent is particularly impressive, as illustrated by the high levels of Pre-Order Intent, which is the highest of any title currently being tracked. Even without the Call of Duty association, it is still perceived as a must have title.”

The fact that the Call of Duty brand was dropped from the title of Modern Warfare 2 made a significant impact on you? Leave us a comment with your opinion.