Modern Warfare 2 Released Early?

by GrathiusXR:

©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos

It seems that over at the Australian Xbox.com forums there has been some speculation that Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 could be on the shelves as early as this end of the week according to some forumites. It seems that Big W has spoken to a few of their customers in store notifying them that they can stroll into the store as early as today (Thursday 5 November) and pick up their copy.

There’s much speculation as to this being real or not as their new catalog which starts Thursday 5th of November has the Standard Edition of Modern Warfare 2 at a nice price of $AUD82 which isn’t too bad considering the high retail price for this one, as well as the sale starting 5th of November and ending on the 11th which is the official release date of MW2.

A few forumites have already posted in saying that they have picked up their copy from Big W already yet gamertags on the Xbox.com website are yet to update to really prove that these people have indeed picked up a legit copy of MW2 just under a week away from its worldwide release.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if this actually turns out to be true to be honest.

This is mainly due to the fact that over the past few weeks leaked footage of third person gameplay has been released on Youtube.com, leaked footage of the Terrorist Missions was released on Youtube and to top that it seems that a couple of sites have already released video/written reviews of MW2.

Not to mention the fact that Halo 3: ODST was leaked and also sold up to 2-4 days before it’s release date, as well as Forza Motorsport 3 which was sold 1-2 days before its release. I know that isn’t much but still a broken street date regardless of how many days is still a broken street date.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one just in case some of these forumites are actually telling the truth and some actually manage to pick up their copy from Big W and/or other stores. If it does manage to break out and spread, hundreds of gamers will be storming their local store where they pre-ordered to try their best to hassle them to break as well.

With Activision on Media Blackout at the moment you can bet that questions will be asked and warnings will be issued much like with the release of Fable II last year in which K-Mart broke street date and were then fined $10,000 as well as being barred from selling Gears of War 2 for at least 2 weeks after its release date.

For the moment this is just rumour, but we’ll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Friday 6 November:  It seems Big W was issued with a big directive from Head Office not to release the game early.  This was apparently also the case at WOW Sight & Sound, which was also reported as having broken the street date today.  They were allegedly also instructed from above to stop selling them.  Other reports are that JB Hi Fi may also have let some slip by.  One manager at GAME was frantically running around my town trying to track down if the embargo had indeed been broken and if he could sell early.

©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos