With the recent reveal of Treyarch’s Black Ops 2, the hype for Call of Duty is, yet again, at an all-time high. By how much you ask? How about 400%?
This is according to Nielsen Media, a research firm who recently spoke to GamesIndustry International. They have gathered data from major social networks like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, including over 160 million blogs and boards. According to their findings, the number of messages surrounding Black Ops 2 stood at 21,454 on May 2nd, a day after the official announcement, compared to only 4,911 on April 30th, a day before the announcement.
Typically, buzz is at its highest peak days before the launch of a Call of Duty title where up to 69,942 messages could be generated on a single day. Though the recent amount of pre-launch buzz is at an all-time high at the moment, it still only comes in second to the amount of buzz generated by last year’s announcement of Call of Duty: Elite. On May 31st, 2011, NM Incite analyst Mickey Campione tracked 21,728 messages surrounding Elite.
Also, according to the graph below, the PS3 seems to be catching up in terms of Call of Duty hype. Typically, the Xbox 360 has been regarded as the “home of FPS games,” especially among Call of Duty players. With a growing amount of hype being generated among PS3 users, and with Activision’s DLC contract with Microsoft terminating this year, as reported by joystiq, perhaps we will see the end of DLC timed-exclusivity with the release of Black Ops 2 or shortly after. On top of this, there is also the rumor that CoD: Elite will come included in a PlayStation Plus subscription in the near future.
According MCV, Pre-order numbers for Black Ops 2 are already significantly higher than those of the original Black Ops in 2010. In fact, Amazon has revealed that day one pre-orders were three times higher.
In other news, Black Ops 2 has recently showed up on Steam though it will be unlocked in “approximately 6 months, 3 weeks, 4 days and 14 hours,” at the time of writing. The description reads, “pushing the boundaries of what fans have come to expect from the record-setting entertainment franchise, Call of Duty®: Black Ops II propels players into a near future, 21st Century Cold War, where technology and weapons have converged to create a new generation of warfare. Pre-order today.”
How hyped are you for Treyarch’s next Call of Duty title? Do you expect to see more sales records broken with Black Ops 2, or do you foresee further decline in numbers, a pattern set in motion with the release of Modern Warfare 3?
