Black Ops 2 announcement boosts Call of Duty hype by 400%

How much power does Call of Duty command over the gaming industry?  Love it or hate it, it's commands attention.

Following the announcement Black Ops 2, the next installment of the yearly franchise, buzz surrounding Call of Duty has increased by 400%. 

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Nielsen Media explained that they had gathered data from major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and over 160 million blogs and boards. 

According to their findings, the number of messages surrounding Black Ops 2 on April 30th, the day before the announcement, stood at 4,911.  On May 2nd, the day after the official reveal, that number grew to 21,343.  That's quite a boost.

“Historically, buzz has been at its highest around launch time for Call of Duty, generating up to 69,942 messages on a single day,” NM Incite analyst Mickey Campione said. “As far as pre-launch buzz goes, today’s buzz total of 21,454 is second highest, only to May 31, 2011′s 21,728 messages. The buzz on [that day] came after Activision announced their Call of Duty: Elite online community.

A graph showed the Xbox 360 was the leading platform for discussion which shouldn't come as a surprise seeing as how it's known as the "home of FPS games", especially among Call of Duty players.  What is worth mentioning, however, is that the PS3 seems to be catching up.  Could this mean we see an end to the DLC time-exclusivity that Activision has with Microsoft?  I hope so; the DLC release schedule for Modern Warfare 3 has been ridiculously too complex to follow.

[GamesIndustry International]