14 DAY TRIAL // Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is set to become a massively popular game, at least according to the CEO of its publisher, Bobby Kotick, who proclaimed at this week's E3 2011 conference that the demand for the game is reaching impressive levels, and that not even Electronic Arts' Battlefield 3 can touch it later this year, when it is released.
Activision is getting ready to once again launch a new chapter in its Call of Duty series, with Modern Warfare 3 set to reach the record-breaking levels of its predecessor, Black Ops, and surpass them by leaps and bounds.
Kotick emphasizes that Modern Warfare 3 has been tweaked by its two developers, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games to reach an even bigger audience.
"We've had a lot of success with Call of Duty as a franchise," he said to CVG. "The product that we're about to release, Modern Warfare 3, is the result of an enormous amount of audience research, and it is what our tens of million of players are saying they'd like to see in their next action experience, so we're very confident about its launch."
The Activision boss also claims that the interest in Modern Warfare 3 is huge, with pre-orders and sign ups for extra services like Call of Duty Elite reaching impressive levels.
"So far every one of our sequels has preformed better than our prequels by meaningful amounts. The demand that we're seeing on this game is unlike we've seen ever, and not by a little. If you look at the pre-orders, if you look at the number of people that have signed up for the beta test, if you look at things like Google searches of Modern Warfare, these are numbers that we've never seen before."
Last but not least, Kotick also talked about Modern Warfare 3's biggest rival this year, Battlefield 3, which has been hyped as a potential Call of Duty killer by its own publisher, EA.
"Well so far I've only seen Battlefield 3 shown on a PC, so I haven't seen it on a console which is where the bulk of our business is. If it's just a PC title as it looks like today, that's a very small audience to participate, but we always are interested to see what our competitors are doing."
While Kotick is pretty sure of Modern Warfare 3's success, gamers will ultimately decide this battle on October 25, when Battlefield 3 is released, and on November 8, when Modern Warfare 3 is deployed around the world.