Promotional Consideration: Commercial of Duty
by Eric Caoili 
{ Apr 6th 2008 at 6:00PM }
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Though Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold exceptionally well in North America, topping the software charts for its PC and console releases, Activision is smart enough to know that marketing the title in Japan, where the DS is king and first-person shooter sales is an oxymoron, requires a different strategy.
The result? Activision actually produced a 30-second spot specifically for the DS version of the multiplatform game ...
Running into battle. Touchscreen blazing.
To compare, in the US, the DS release was an afterthought in Activision's promotion plan, an asterisk in the marketing budget spreadsheet. The only evidence of a handheld version one could see in the Call of Duty 4 ads that ran in US magazines was the Nintendo DS logo dropped at the bottom of the page.
It's a shame because Call of Duty 4 DS received favorable reviews; IGN called it "an impressive, immersive, entertaining pocket experience that truly feels like a miniaturized version of its console counterparts." If Activision had put as much money effort into advertising the title in the US as it has in Japan, perhaps more gamers here would have recognized that.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Paul @ Apr 6th 2008 9:48PM
Incredibly, I saw the title yesterday at Toys R Us for 30 dollars and bought one for me and my girlfriend (She LOVES Shooters) and we have not stopped playing it! We should get more ads for the portable version in the U.S.
Bluebreaker @ Apr 7th 2008 4:43AM
I'm suprised...I don't seem to remember seeing a TV ad for Call of Duty 4 *period* much less the DS one. Though if they asked me to do an ad I would have just had a bunch soldiers around a tank in a photo op playing on the DS.