Modern Warfare 2 seems to have settled its identity crisis, as official photos of the game’s box art reveal that the game has reacquired the “Call of Duty” brand name after giving it the heave ho some months ago.
“S**t just got real,” Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling recently declared on his Twitter, where he revealed the official box art for Modern Warfare 2. While I’m all for quoting that immortal line from Bad Boys II, I have to say that I respectfully disagree. S**t did not just get real, it just got more confusing. See, above the Modern Warfare 2 logo on the box is, you guessed it, the Call of Duty logo.
Modern Warfare 2 once ditched the Call of Duty prefix to fly solo, a subtitle now a title and brand name of its own. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” suggested a brand lineage Activision supposedly didn’t want attached to this new self-sustaining franchise. But after reports revealed that consumer awareness of the game dropped dramatically after the Call of Duty bit was dropped, it appears that Activision has done another U-turn.
So is it Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or just Modern Warfare 2? Maybe we should just whisper the Call of Duty part but shout out and put special stress on the Modern Warfare 2 part when we’re saying the game of the game out loud. “Excuse me, sir, I’d like to buy callofduty MODERN WARFARE 2 please,” you’ll say at GameStop later this year.
The thing I noticed is that the Call of Duty logo is especially small, with the Modern Warfare 2 bit especially big, by comparison. Which suggests that Activision wants to stress the Modern Warfare 2 end of the equation more than the CoD part, but are aware that yeah, it’s not enough on its own. Ah well. If Modern Warfare really becomes a brand of its own, it’ll look back on these times as its awkward growing pains.
