14 DAY TRIAL // Eric Hirshberg, who is the Chief Executive Officer at Activision Publishing, told the audience at the Creativity and Technology event organized by Advertising Age that, “I said, like it or not our launch just started. And it wasn’t on our time table, and we didn’t instigate it, but it’s out there folks, and we can’t put it back in. “Our fans didn’t do anything wrong today. They’re having a great day. They’re really interested in the game. They’re poring over all the details trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not.”
The company was clearly not prepared to deal with the leak but had to quickly do damage control and try to limit the size of the leak while also looking for opportunities.
Hirshberg has stated that the existence of social networks has made it easier than ever to talk directly to fans and explain what happened and what they can expect from the Activision team handling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
The executive added, “A little fire of interest about our game got started today, and on most other days of the year we would come in and be like, hey, everyone’s on the Internet talking about us, and that would be a good thing, right? Why is it because we didn’t instigate it and control it, that it’s instantly a bad thing?”
The leak was an embarrassment to Activision but it has not in any way blunted the success of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 release.
The first person shooter launched in November and has managed to quickly beat all rivals in order to become the biggest entertainment launch of the year, even managing to beat high profile movie releases while managing to move more than 10 million copies before the end of the year.
Activision has already confirmed that a Call of Duty branded video game will arrive during 2012 and a leak might again be a good way of unveiling some details to the fan base.