Anything you can do, I've already done better

Still trying to wrap my head around the marketing decision here.

I caught this on Gamasutra:

"Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title."

He continued, "However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed 'Call of Duty' from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic."

By all accounts, Modern Warfare 2 is going to sell a bazillion units, so dropping the Call of Duty handle isn't likely to hurt anything. What I'm having a hard time understanding, though, is what Activision and/or Infinity Ward hope to gain from it. Brand recognition is usually a good thing, isn't it?

Yes, it is ... at least until something damages the brand. If you find out that a certain model of car explodes as the result of a simple rear-end collision, you're probably not going to buy any model of car from the company that engineered the death-trap. I have no idea whether IW (and really, it had to be their decision) actually thinks the Call of Duty brand is damaged in some way, but I just can't think of another logical explanation.

If I'm right, it speaks volumes about IW's views on the quality of Call of Duty: World at War. They created the franchise, and maybe they think Treyarch fouled their waters.