Activision Blizzard may have the biggest selling game of all time at launch on its hands with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but the performance of two other key franchises is under scrutiny.
Tony Hawk: Ride, was released today , with a new skateboard accessory. It follows the October 27 launch of DJ Hero, an extension of the Guitar Hero franchise, using model turntables rather than instruments.
Video game publishers know they can boost revenues the more they accessorise their products – a limited-edition version of Modern Warfare 2 with souvenir military night goggles costs $150, but has been selling for as much as $700 on Amazon.
But there may be limits to the public’s spending and appetite for yet another working accessory to add to the clutter around the television.
Sales of DJ Hero, which retails at $120, twice what a disk-only game costs, have been lacklustre since its launch, according to analysts.
Cowen and Company reduced its estimate for fourth-quarter US sales from 1.6m to 600,000, and first-year estimates from 2.5m to 950,000.
The turntable is intuitive to use for players wanting to “scratch” like a hip-hop DJ, but they may not exist in the same numbers as the air guitarists who prefer Guitar Hero.
Wedbush Morgan analysts predict DJ Hero will be “a modest success, but supply constraints and a limited audience could limit sales. It is not clear to us that this game is a ‘franchise’, particularly if the initial installed base is below 2m.”
In contrast, the Tony Hawk: Ride skateboard bundle – another $120 purchase – seems a natural extension of a franchise that has shifted more than 40m units but had nowhere else to go. Moves on the skateboard, which is minus its wheels, are faithfully reproduced on-screen in a dramatic enhancement of a game previously played with a standard controller.
Ride seems to have more going for it than DJ Hero, although it does launch at the same time as two other titles many gamers feel they must have this year – Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II and EA’s Left 4 Dead 2.
Meanwhile, sales of Modern Warfare 2 have probably been helped rather than hindered by controversy over its “No Russian” level, where you may find scenes disturbing that show terrorists carrying out an airport massacre of civilians.
Questions have been asked in the British parliament about the game level and Activision today described reports that the game had been banned in Russia as “erroneous” – the scene was removed from the PC version of the game on sale there, it said.
