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The massively popular, and over two years old, first-person shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is taking the Mac App Store by storm. The still-popular game is selling for $49.99 and is a 6.85GB download yet is already ranked #9 in the App Store’s Paid Games category.
While COD4 was released in 2007 for Windows PC and consoles, it’s been available on OS X since 2008. The game is available through Steam for $29.99, but only for Windows computers. So while the release on the Mac App Store makes for the most convenient way for gamers to download it, the hefty price premium will certainly have some people looking elsewhere (if for some reason they haven’t bought it over the course of the last two years).
If nothing else this release looks to be a bit of an experiment. By putting out a massively popular, but outdated (by two versions) game at full price the publisher can test the water and measure gamers’ response. If it doesn’t do well it would be easy enough to drop the price, though that will hurt given Apple’s 30% cut of all sales.
COD4 is a back catalog game at this point and while it’ll be a welcome addition to the Mac App Store the trend of releasing old games at close to their original retail price will cause many gamers to balk. This might very well be a play for more casual fans though, people who haven’t bought the game and prefer Apple’s easy-to-use App Store to a physical disk.
