Modern Warfare 2 is the most pre-ordered game ever

Speaking to USA Today's Game Hunters blog, GameStop's executive vice president for merchandising and marketing Tony Bartel revealed that next week's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be a record-breaking one for his company, stating "the number of pre-order reservations we've taken for the game is the highest for any title we've ever sold in our 6,200 store network."

For the time being, we'll leave Bartel's statement that Modern Warfare 2 will be "the biggest entertainment launch of all time" alone--the scale of video game prices against other forms of media make that a bit tough to compare anyway. Figuring out that it's the most reserved game of all time, you'll not that the planets have pretty much aligned in order for Modern Warfare 2 to perform this achievement.

A single-console game, no matter how anticipated, could never match the fervor for Modern Warfare 2--so that takes series like Halo, Gears of War, and Metal Gear Solid out of the running. What else can compete on that sort of level? Grand Theft Auto IV landed on two consoles instead of three over a year and a half ago, back when the PlayStation 3's cheapest models were $400. Further alienating PS3 customers was the pre-release promise of exclusive Xbox 360 chapters. So when you consider that a popular sequel is launching on three platforms simultaneously--with no real exclusives that would alienate single-system gamers--at a time where the PS3 and Xbox 360 have very friendly purchase prices and the retailer making the boast is opening new stores even during lean times(Reuters)--yeah, it's actually a bit of a surprise that it's taken so long for someone to tell us that this has happened.

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