Top 10 of 2009: News

Number 1: Modern Warfare 2 and Crater Avoidance

If the supposition that the core videogames market will continue to grow incrementally for the foreseeable future as the generational divide recedes is correct, it's probably reasonable to assume that the record for superstar blockbuster game sales will continue to be broken on a fairly regular basis.

But that shouldn't detract at all from Modern Warfare 2's achievement in breaking GTA IV's sales record to become the new biggest entertainment launch in history, grossing an estimated USD 550 million in its first five days on sale.

The story effectively began back in June at E3, when the first gameplay footage of the snowmobile level played out in the Microsoft press conference. From then on in it seemed as if there was really only one game being released in the Holiday period, and what makes the game's success even more significant is that most of the rest of the release slate gradually slunk off into - for the most part - the first couple of months of 2010.

Activision had swiftly spelled out the company's ambitions for the game, predicting it would become a new record-holder, and compounding that confidence with a controversially higher-than-usual trade price point (with CEO Bobby Kotick suggesting the company might even have gone further).

Among the industry figures to issue warnings about the "crater" left by the game on release were Microsoft's Peter Molyneux and Ubisoft's Michael de Plater, and with the exception of Assassin's Creed II and Left 4 Dead 2, they were pretty much heeded.

The decision by Infinity Ward not to set up dedicated servers for the PC edition of the game caused minor hysteria in online communities, prompting a host of 'rival' developers to respond with assurances that their own games would do - and that wasn't the last controversy before launch, as the terrorist airport scene set mainstream press pens aflame with indignation and even caused a fuss in the UK Parliament.

None of that really seemed to matter, though, and for the month of November it was nigh on impossible to avoid a story about some strand of success for the game - but that was a nice slice of positivity for the games industry set against a general trend of falling sales elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see where Infinity Ward - as, presumably, opposed to Treyarch - will take the series next. Call of Duty, as one of the most valuable franchises in videogames, will now face that ever-more-difficult challenge of evolving the game without taking too many risks...

But for now that's of no concern: News stories relating to MW2 for the foreseeable future will continue to relate in the vast majority of cases to the ongoing success story, and that, frankly, is a pretty nice way to end a tricky year.