November 2011 is turning out to be an epic months for games, with many of us eagerly awaiting the release of both Elder Scrolls: Skryim and CoD: Modern Warfare 3.
Now we know that both titles are going to rock (hard) and will provide us with hours of entertainment during a long and cold winter.
Of course, the industry is stoked, especially about Modern Warfare 3, which, despite the crappy economy, is expected to handily shatter previous CoD sales records.
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will likely be the year’s top-selling game. If MW3 receives strong review scores (≈ 85 or above on Metacritic.com), it should at least match predecessor Black Ops’ sales (over 25 million units) due to the network effect, with compression of sales into 2011 likely,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said in an industry note obtained by Industry Gamers.
Pachter also confirmed that MW3 would likely set a new (industry) entertainment record, and said he remained rather bullish about Activision’s new social service, Call of Duty: Elite.
“I see compression of sales for virtually every game, would bet that they are 10% higher over the same time frame, so $1.1 billion in the first six weeks.
“[In addition], I expect the Call of Duty: Elite premium membership plan to be very popular with CoD’s hard core gamers. Elite is being bundled at a $10 discount with the underlying game, which may accelerate as many as 3 – 4 million subscriptions into 2011.”
Meanwhile, it seems as if some enthusiastic Modern Warfare fans just can’t wait for November 8, as a number of MW3 copies have “slipped” off Kmart shelves and are now going for hefty amounts of cash on eBay.
Yes, Joystiq is reporting that one gamer snapped up a copy of MW3 for a cool $1,725. Of course, it remains to be seen if the sale is actually legit, but still, there is probably someone out there who would be willing to spend nearly 2K just to play the game a few days early.
