What was the price of MW2?
December 1st, 2009
Before the hotly anticipated launch of Modern Warfare 2 we all gasped as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick announced they would be upping the RRP to £54.99, but just how much did we end up paying?
According to MCV, the game grossed £67.4 million in it’s first week on sale, quite incredible I’m sure you’ll agree. With 1.78 million (again incredible!) unit sales of the title just where does this leave our average user? So based on these figures we can calculate the average price of the title with a very simple equation, Revenue/Units Sold = Av. Price, or £67.4/1.78 which gives us the magic figure of £37.87.
So we’re well below the stated RRP, mostly I would put this down to rampant supermarket discounting, online deals and ultimately retailers not wanting to risk low sales by pricing people out of the market. To have a launch week sales total of 1.7m units first you must put the stock into retail, had the game of failed a lot of people would be sitting on a lot of unsold stock – a total disaster!
Of course with years of build up, huge marketing spend and a decent game to boot, no-one would have bet against instant success. Even so I didn’t quite expect the game to sell this well, i had my initial forecast at 1.2m, still a huge and record breaking number, just no where near the games eventual success.
Of course when week ones are huge the only place to go is down, has Modern Warfare 2 burnt through it’s market already or will sales continue to keep it at number 1 and grow the franchise from it’s previous base? Only time will tell, but it’s a damn good start…
