The latest Call of Duty game has pulled in more than US$775 million worldwide in its first five days, setting a new entertainment record.
Modern Warfare 3 has smashed theatrical box office, book and videogame sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars, beating the previous record of US$650 million held by Call of Duty: Black Ops last year.
Rival game Battlefield 3 boasted sales of 5 million units in its first week of release in late October – Call of Duty: MW3 sold more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours alone.
“As I have said all year, we have been singluarly focused on making a spectacular game for our fans, and nothing else,” says Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Call of Duty publishers Activision.
“I would like to thank our incredible team for the pulling off the launch of the year, as well as our retail partners around the world. But most of all, I want to thank our fans. They are our toughest critics, and our biggest supporters, and none of this would be possible without them.”
Call of Duty: MW3 also broke Xbox Live and PlayStation Network records.
More than 7 million multiplayer hours were logged playing Call of Duty: MW3 by the end of launch day, November 8, and the game set a new record for concurrent players on Xbox LIVE with 3.3 million simultaneous users.
Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said the game was “hugely successful on PlayStation 3 … driving millions of gamers globally to PlayStation Network”.
“Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment,” said Robert Kotick, Activision Blizzard CEO.
“Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded US$6 billion worldwide. We expect continued sales momentum, as reviews and audience enthusiasm suggest that this is the best Call of Duty game that we have ever made.”
Call of Duty: MW3 is rated R16 in New Zealand and is available now.
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