Activision doubles Wii and DS games in 2008, this includes new Guitar Hero, Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Transformers

8 February 2007

4 Comments

Posted by:Ferry

In a conference call with analysts, Activision president and CEO Mike Griffith showered praise on Activision’s bread and butter franchises, Call of Duty and Tony Hawk. According to NPD, Call of Duty 3 racked up over $85.8 million in US sales in 2006 from its release in November until the end of the year. Activision said it also took in over $10 million from international sales of Call of Duty 2 map packs on Xbox Live Marketplace during the quarter.

US 2006 sales of Tony Hawk’s Project 8 exceeded $43.9 million, while Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam eked out just over $9.0 million. Despite the latter’s lackluster numbers, Activision also announced it was porting Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam to the PlayStation 2 during the April-June 2007 quarter.

Griffith singled out Guitar Hero II for particular praise. Despite only being released on one platform, the PS2, Guitar Hero II headbanged out over $93.6 million in the US alone in 2006, according to NPD. Griffith credited the game’s success to an extensive publicity campaign, which includes some 7,500 demo kiosks, and better-than-expected sales of the PS2.

For the company’s 2008 fiscal year, which begins on April 1st 2007, Griffith said Activision will have 60 individual products, not all full games, which would “aggressively target the Nintendo platforms [Wii and DS] consistent with our multi-platform strategy and Nintendo’s expected growth. In 2008, we will double our offerings on the DS and the Wii, including Guitar Hero, Spider-Man, Shrek, Transformers, Call of Duty, and Tony Hawk.”

According to Gamespot the first half of 2008 Activision will ship big titles like Call of Duty: Roads of Victory for PSP on March 13 and Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 on April 3.

It is also the tentative launch window of the long-in-the-making PC shooter Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. In the second quarter you’ll see the release of a wide spread of cross-platform games based on three films: Spider-Man 3 around May 4, Shrek the Third around May 18, and Transformers around July 4.

Activision reported they doubled their Nintendo support after they had gotten “better visibility regarding the allocation of PlayStation 3 hardware.” In other words Sony still can’t seem to produce enough. Mr. Griffith also gave his company’s predictions on how the 2007 console race will shape up:

Activision’s current estimates peg the Xbox 360 as selling 5 million units in North America during 2007. The publisher has the Wii, PS2, and PS3 tied at 4 million apiece. The company also said it expects “10 million handhelds” to be bought on the continent during the next 12 months, though no platform was specified.