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Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What?

Posted by Soulskill on from the our-bark-is-worse-than-our-boycott dept.

The Opposable Thumbs blog is running an interesting article contrasting everything Activision did "wrong" in creating and marketing Modern Warfare 2 with the game's unqualified success. Despite price hikes, somewhat shady review practices, exploit frustrations, and the dedicated server fiasco, the game has raked in over a billion dollars in sales. "There was only one way to review Modern Warfare 2: on the Xbox 360, in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision. Accepting the paid trip, along with room and board, was the only way you were going to get a review before launch. Joystiq noted that this broke their ethics policy, but they went anyway. Who can say no to a review destined to bring in traffic? Shacknews refused to call their coverage a 'review' because of the ethical issues inherent in the situation, but that stance was unique. The vast majority of news outlets didn't disclose how the review was conducted, or added a disclaimer after the nature of the review was made public. This proved to Activision that if you're big enough, you can dictate the exact terms of any review, and no ethics policy will make news outlets turn you down."

2 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. fs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    fritz!!11scamm!!!

  2. I got a copy for free! by santax · · Score: -1, Troll

    Without DRM, without rewarding Activision for giving us less game for more money. I for one am quite grateful to Activision. I never knew it was so rewarding to just download a 6 hour demo (singleplayer) on the pirate bay and I will never ever in my life go back to the weird way of paying a big multinational a lot of money to F me in the A. Thank you activision! I wished someone opened my eyes 20 years ago. It would have saved me at least 10.000 euro (that is like a million us dollar) over the time. Activision is my an hero. (sure, mod this down. Or you can see that despite this game being successful in terms of sale, it also has cost MS over 2% of their gold-subscroptions (they banned a lot of consoles over this game). I wonder what would have made more income in taxes over a period of lets sa 4 years.)