It's COD: Modern Warfare 2 after all

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 July, 2009

Was always going to be, apparently.

Activision and Infinity Ward have decided it's best to call their upcoming game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 after all, and not just Modern Warfare 2.

At the time of the game's announcement, the duo claimed that Modern Warfare was big enough to stand on its own 10 million feet, and refrained from prefixing it with its traditional series moniker.

But having sent out box artwork with the Call of Duty name firmly in place this week, a spokesperson told Joystiq: "Infinity Ward, the original creators of the Call of Duty franchise, has said from the beginning Modern Warfare 2 resides in the Call of Duty universe. This is reflected in the title's package."

"Modern Warfare 2 is the direct sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. We have focused our attention on Modern Warfare in order to most effectively communicate the fact that this is the first true sequel in the Call of Duty series."

By not calling it Call of Duty for three months. No no, it makes perfect sense.

Check out our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 preview from E3 to find out why all this will be worth it in the end.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DFawkes #1 3 years ago

    Fair enough, I retract any whining about it not being COD, because apparently it is. Won't change the game though, it'll still be awesome!

  • beastmaster #2 3 years ago

    Yeah, I think it's a good move adding the branding. Mums & Dads who go in every year at Xmas looking for the next Call of Duty will not be confused. Could potentially impact sales by dropping COD. Shame we'll never find out by how much.

  • uglygamer #3 3 years ago

    Not brave enough are they. It was always going to happen, had they removed the name they could have lost big sales

  • Beek4257 #4 3 years ago

    Then they should call it:
    Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. CoD4:MW2 for short.
    Which isn't confusing AT ALL.

  • ChthonicEcho #5 3 years ago

    By not calling it Call of Duty for three months. No no, it makes perfect sense.

    Yes, exactly. It's more than just a bit odd. Oh, well, I couldn't care less about the name of a game.
    Edited by 1 at 10/07/09 @ 09:40

  • homerramone #6 3 years ago

    Won't change the game though, it'll still be awesome!
    And so much fun online in the first month I expect.

    With a cracking combo of connection problems, campers desperate to be one the first with a gold cross (or its COD6:COD4:MW2 equivalent) and of course the cockknockers that are just determined to find places to get in the map they really shouldnt be so that they can join the fellas with tents.

    Lets just hope they give us a little more flexibilty in the playlists. Like bieng able to search for a game with a specific class of weapon... or better yet a game w/o the fucking irritating helicopters the aforementioned campers get one after the other.


  • Eighthours #7 3 years ago

    Flippity flop, flippity-flop!

  • bluem4gic #8 3 years ago

    bring on the COD TAX

  • carlitoswagon #9 3 years ago

    @homerramone

    Agree with that completely. Camping is my pet hate and it's got worse on cod4 since WAW was released. All the wee camping pricks who discovered cod4 late on are shaping the games I've played recently. Its getting on my tits.

    They should introduce a game mode where you explode into flames if you sit in the same spot for too long (unless sniping) and attempts to glitch send a 50,000 volt shock directly from your remote to your knob!

    I'm away to put that on Twitter..

    Rant over............

  • Eraysor #10 3 years ago

    Activison really are the dumbest people in the universe.

  • Phishfood #11 3 years ago

    So did someone make a mistake and submitted the wrong art to the printers or did Activision think it wouldn't sell good enough on its own and affixed the COD name back in to place?

  • TheVoice #12 3 years ago

    There's a backtrack if ever I saw one.

  • gallow #13 3 years ago

    Its nice to see the pre-order pricing for this game is much higher than any other game that going to released around the same time. I shall still buy on pc though but not for £35 which seems to be the average at the moment.

  • rhinoxious #14 3 years ago

    I reckon they did some market research and realised that most people had totally missed COD4's MW monicker.

  • mashk #15 3 years ago

    Ho hum. What we're all DYING TO KNOW is, when's the the BETA? And how do we get keys?

  • kinky_mong #16 3 years ago

    "Mums & Dads who go in every year at Xmas looking for the next Call of Duty will not be confused."

    They're obviously already confused enough to miss the age rating plastered on the CoD games.

  • Artemus #17 3 years ago

    This wouldn't have anything to do with that survey that said 50% of the people didn't realise it was a CoD game. No sir.

  • Darren #18 3 years ago

    I thought it was strange that Activision would drop the Call of Duty name for Modern Warfare 2. It is after all an established brand that people are familiar with and that in turn helps to sell the game. It certainly worked for the inferior non-Infinity Ward developed Call of Duty games. Call of Duty 3 was terrible for example, rushed and very buggy, yet it went on to sell millions on the strength of the previous game by IW.

  • Raz76 #19 3 years ago

    I guess someone woke up to the fact that "Modern Warfare" is a terrible name on its own.

  • linksdad #20 3 years ago

    "Then they should call it:
    Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2.

    Exactly what I was going to say.

    They are going to end up in a real piockle over this. There has been a genuine quality gap between the two developers output, but to the uninitiated it is hard to differentiate between which ones have been great and which ones OK. Activision are now giving that distinction and if the quality differential persists then COD blank is going to suffer as a franchise while COD MW is going to do no better than it would if they hadnt introduced the additional brand.

  • TheNinkyNonk #21 3 years ago

    IWard strike me as being a tad precious...

  • Darren #22 3 years ago

    @link'sdad - Wouldn't it then be Call of Duty 5: Modern Warfare 2?

    I can see why they won't call it that though, it reads like a football score!!!

  • sneetch #23 3 years ago

    "At the time of the game's announcement, the duo claimed that Modern Warfare was big enough to stand on its own 10 million feet, and refrained from prefixing it with its traditional series moniker."

    Shouldn't that be 20 million feet? :p Barring accident or illness of course.

  • TuftyMcTavish #24 3 years ago

    I love these marketing driven backtracking statements. I keep meaning to make a note of a few ones you can just tell will come back around in good time. Not fussed either way personally.

  • Razorus #25 3 years ago

    COD4.2

    End of Discussion.

  • Beek4257 #26 3 years ago

    @Darren

    That would be Call of Duty 5: World at War 2.
    Oy ve ..

  • john_silence #27 3 years ago

    Exactly Artemus. I read somewhere that they ran a survey and the general level of awareness about the game dropped by 20% when they removed the "Call of Duty" part. Treyarch must be doing something right too, after all - or more probably, it's just the 5-year legacy that's starting to get the name into people's minds as a regular mainstream convention. How filthy, when you come to think of it.
    I'll still buy MW2 of course. Maybe they won't sell me a DVD with only the ludicrous French dubbing on it this time, just because I happen to live in Paris.
    Edited by 1 at 10/07/09 @ 15:26

  • zedzee #28 3 years ago

    We're so desperately short of news now, so we're resorting to talk about leaving in/taking out three words?

    I think MW2 would've sufficed as no hardcore gamer I know would've missed the launch of this game.

    Have a nice weekend, all...Over & Out.

  • Alkeno #29 3 years ago

    It makes sense from the marketing side. They could just admit it was a stupid idea to drop COD, but good old pride is always there...

  • Iain815 #30 3 years ago

    If that is the actual image for the boxart, it's ugly.

  • Triggerhappytel #31 3 years ago

    This is clearly ActiBlizz reverting after the buzz over the last few months indicated average folk weren't familiar with the name 'Modern Warfare' whereas every man and his dog now knows Call of Duty.

    Can't they just be honest about it rather than all the backpeddling and lies?!

  • Harrihotpants #32 3 years ago

    It's going to end up being called cod4 2

  • Dunk_13 #33 3 years ago

    it wont have a number

    will just be "call of duty: modern warfare 2"

  • clockworkzombie #34 3 years ago

    @Darren
    CoD 3 is a good game. The single player is fun and multiplayer is excellent and a little different from CoD 2 with the addition of vehicles.
    I am warming to Cod WaW. I think MW is more enjoyable online but I am happily shoving the WaW disc in the 360 and having multiplayer fun. The new maps help I hope they enter the single player deathmatch pool soon.

    CoD 2 is better due to the Russian parts, the single player Russian campaign is superb, I have had more fun with this than the entire MW single player game. The extra Russian maps added to the multiplayer game are some of my favourite maps.

    I wish IW would offer us a MW map pack with maps from the previous IW games, it might be a little strange using modern equipment, some of those maps are the best I have played on.

  • local_celebrity #35 3 years ago

    Gah! I've just had MODERN WARFARE 2 tattooed across my shoulders, nape and back. Why wasn't I consulted?!

    :-(

  • clockworkzombie #36 3 years ago

    @local_celebrity
    A second trip to put the rest on your cods perhaps?

  • JensonJet #37 3 years ago

    It seems incredible to me that anyone's bothered – whether by reporting this or complaining about it. Who cares? Anyone who cares for, or is likely to buy Modern Warfare 2, knows what it is. The only people this affects are Activision and Infinity Ward. Personally I don't care what it's called. I know who's making it, I know it's the sequel to Modern Warfare, and having loved the original, I'll buy it. They can change the name to just "Combat" for all I care. If you really are bothered and won't buy a game based on whether it's title suits you, you clearly have no geniune love for the game and are probably better off buying the sequel to a game who's name you approve. A completely petty argument if ever there was one!
    Edited by 1 at 11/07/09 @ 11:09

  • Freek #38 3 years ago

    There was the impression that Infinity Ward wanted to distence itself from Call Of Duty now that it became an anual franchise and that Treyarch also made games in the series.

    But ofcourse how much can you do by confining yourself just to "Modern Warfare" ? There'd be maybe one more game you could do before the concept got old.

  • makeamazing #39 3 years ago

    I dunno, I was quite happy with it being called Modern Warfare. I certainly didnt think it would affect sales. Also there are so many different settings and locations I really think game developers could continue to think up new ideas quite easily.

  • Triggerhappytel #40 3 years ago

    @ Sniper_Fox

    So you think ActiBlizz claiming that it was always going to be called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is not backpeddling?! I for one don't believe that for a second.

  • hiddenranbir #41 3 years ago

    Hehe, for a quick glance I thought that said, COD: Modem Warfare 2.

  • firefly #42 3 years ago

    On its own Modern Warfare is a bit of a rubbish title really. It worked on CoD4 as a means of distinguishing it from its WW2 based predecessors but without that context it doesn't sound interesting.

    Got to give Activision credit for trying though. Seperating Modern Warfare as its own brand certainly makes sense as a long-term strategy as the series presumably continues to flip back and forth between modern and WW2 settings. Perhaps they should take the Square-Enix naming formula and call it something like Modern Warfare 2 -Call of Duty-.

  • codnation #43 2 years ago

    good! Although, for a minute I thought it'd be cool seperating it from the COD series... but I think the series is moving away from WW2 anyways... with Treyarch moving on to do vietnam or the cold war :) So it makes sense, keeping it in.

    Discuss MW2 over on the modern warfare 2 forums at http://www.codnation.net