Selling $US650 million in the first five days after its November 9 worldwide release, Call of Duty: Black Ops was already well on the way to topping the sales of Modern Warfare 2, breaking the previous installment’s record of $US550 million soundly. Now Activision says the latest installment in the Call of Duty series has reached the $US1 billion worldwide sales milestone far ahead of Modern Warfare 2, which didn’t hit the mark until mid-January of last year.
“In all of entertainment, only Call of Duty and Avatar have ever achieved the billion dollar revenue milestone this quickly,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. “This is a tribute to the global appeal of the Call of Duty franchise, the exceptional talent at Treyarch and the hundreds of extraordinary people across our many Call of Duty studios including Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer that work tirelessly on the franchise. Our ability to provide the most compelling, immersive entertainment experience, and enhance it with regular, recurring content that delivers hundreds of hours of audience value, has allowed Call of Duty to continue to set sales and usage records.”
James Cameron’s special effects-laden film Avatar reached the $US1 billion sales mark 19 days after its worldwide release on December 18 of last year. The speed is even more impressive when factoring in the price difference between a video game and a movie ticket.
Black Ops players likely have Avatar fans beat in terms of entertainment hours at least, with more than 600 million hours logged playing the game, with Microsoft statistics showing the average player logging in more than once a day to play for longer than an hour at a time, with more than half that time spent playing online with friends.
Will a video game ever beat Avatar’s $US1 billion speed record?
oggob
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 9:03 AMModern Warfare 3… if that story is brought to a close, then it will surely get damn close, regardless of who makes it
Ben
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 9:39 AMAnd Activision dont realize they’re beating a dead franchise? The game is MW2 in the Cold War. That’s it! I’ll stick with Bad Company 2 for my MP gaming, at least its a challenge
Matt
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 9:56 AMKill me now.
I don’t want to be in a world where Call of Duty is a shit game but keeps making money.
Steve0410
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 2:32 PMBlack Ops isn’t an awful game, it’s just a mediocre one that now, is snowballing with people jumping on board just for the experience.
But there’s no way it should be this successful. Encouraging Bobby Kotick like this and he’ll just snap his slavedriver’s whip and we’ll likely see MW 3, 4 and 5 before this time next year.
Muzlbut
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 3:02 PM“mid January of last year” damn… i didn’t know it was out mid January last year [sarcasm]
v4next
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 5:45 PMHey Activision, Call of Duty was created by Infinity Ward…