The Modern Warfare 3 leak was one of the biggest information leaks in gaming history. It was definitely a win for Kotaku, who managed to dig up a mountain of details on what is undoubtedly one of the biggest, if not the biggest game of the year – before it was even announced. However, according to Activision, it looks as if the leak may be turning into one big W for the company.

Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg sent out a company wide email after the leak and subsequent game reveal. Within said email were some very choice quotes about what has transpired over the last few weeks:

“We were lucky in that we were very close to our scheduled reveal date, and therefore, we had a number of assets that had not yet been released, but were ready to go.”

Those assets turned out to be the four teaser trailers that were quickly released after the leak went viral, which let everyone know that Modern Warfare 3 was indeed coming, and that the leak was real.

“We also needed to deal with the fact that, like it or not, our launch had just begun.”

“Instead of panicking, we took the fire of interest that had been started by the leak, and poured gasoline on it… everybody involved delivered under pressure.”

The numbers don’t lie. Those trailers went just as viral as the leak. Soon everyone had stopped talking about Kotaku and started talking about Activision.

“We had over 4.8 million hits on the various Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 teasers over those first 48 hours. To put that in perspective, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops had 61,000 and 89,000 hits, respectively, in their first two days.

If you ask me, Activision has handled this leak extremely well and has turned all the attention from the leak to themselves and their upcoming plans for rolling out marketing content for Modern Warfare 3.

“Very few companies could have woken up with a crisis of this magnitude, and gone to bed with an undeniable win… everyone should be extremely proud.”



What do you think? Did Activision handle the leak well, was this really a win for the company?

http://www.ripten.com/2011/05/21/activision-says-modern-warfare-3-leak-was-a-win-for-the-company/

Posted: May 22, 2011 12:16 am