Name Change Bad for Modern Warfare 2?

I had a feeling it was not a smart idea to remove the “Call of Duty” name from Modern Warfare 2. Apparently dropping the name has hurt the consumer awareness levels for the game.

A Gamasutra article reports that am OTX survey given to US gamers asking the gamers if they had heard of the “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ game shows that the consumer awareness level dropped to 20 percent when the Call of Duty name was dropped, down from the 40 percent level when the Call of Duty name was still a part of the title.

Nick Williams, from OTX, said that “The Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.” But that hasn’t stopped Modern Warfare 2 from being one of the most anticipated games of this year:

“Despite this dramatic drop in awareness, the purchase intent for Modern Warfare 2 remains very strong,” said Williams. Purchase intent still ranks about four times above average. “In our latest charts based on the last four weeks of data, Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360 ranks as the sixth most anticipated title.”

Now that we’ve seen the statistics, the name change probably wasn’t the smartest idea; but it doesn’t seem to have hurt the anticipated sales of the title. And to ensure that, Activision announced plans for later this year to launch a massive marketing campaign for the game.