Activision Blizzard has announced it has set a new sales record with Call of Duty: Black Ops. The game has broken theatrical box office, book, and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell through in dollars. It has made more than $650 million, according to internal Activision estimates.
This beats the numbers for the previous version of the game, Modern Warfare 2, which generated $550 million in sales during the first five days available. On its first day, Black Ops sold about 5.6 million copies for $360 million, while Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million units for $310 million on its first day.
Black Ops has also set two new Xbox LIVE records on launch day, according to Microsoft: more than 5.9 million multiplayer hours were logged playing the game by more than 2.6 million unique gamers. On the PlayStation 3, it has become the best-selling video game launch of all time on Amazon.com and at GameStop.
Black Ops is the seventh installment of the popular Call of Duty military-themed shooter franchise. Just two weeks ago, Activision Blizzard said that it did not expect Black Ops to outperform Modern Warfare 2 even though a month ago it said preorders for the former were selling faster than those for the latter did.
"Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for two consecutive years across all forms of entertainment," Robert Kotick, Activision Blizzard's CEO, said in a statement. "The title's success illustrates the mass appeal of interactive entertainment as millions of consumers are choosing to play Call of Duty: Black Ops at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media. The number of people playing online and the number of hours they are playing demonstrates how online gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment and certainly validates Activision Blizzard's leadership role in online entertainment."