Could bring in £85 for Activision

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has racked up somewhere in the region of £300m already but Activision Blizzard see no reason to cease capitalising on their latest winner.

The concept of downloadable content has reared its head just a couple of weeks into the much-hyped game’s short life and experts are liberally predicting DLC sales could generate a further $140 (£85m).

Activision Creative Strategist Robert Bowling recently tweeted “DLC is planned for the wonderfully vague timeframe of spring. I’ll let you know when we know when it’ll be done”.

Thanks to industrygamers.com

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter believes DLC will be key to Modern Warfare 2 maintaining its launch price tag and he sees a huge opportunity for Activision to generate up to £85 million just from map packs and other downloadable content.

“Call of Duty downloadable content (DLC) can be a solid contributor to ATVI’s 2010 EPS. As with the last two CoD titles, the game itself should maintain its (circa) £40 launch price until the next iteration (due in large part to the value of its online gameplay), but ATVI will also benefit significantly from the high-margin DLC potential enabled by the packaged product’s success,” he said.

“We estimate that ATVI will generate at least £60 - £85 million in gross revenue from Call of Duty DLC in 2010. After paying the platform holders an estimated 30 percent, this should generate roughly £35-£51 million in EBIT and contribute £0.02 – £0.03 to EPS.”

Ultimately Schachter thinks Activision will introduce more content and at higher prices than previous DLC.

“Though the company has not announced anything, we would not be surprised to see the content expand significantly beyond simple map packs to include new missions, modes of play, and in-game items.

“The point is that Call of Duty’s fanbase will pay for additional content, and we expect ATVI’s Infinity Ward to monetise that throughout 2010.”