Modern Warfare II becomes fastest CoD game to reach $1 billion milestone

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The latest Call of Duty game continues to set records for Activision. Modern Warfare II launched on October 28 and is already considered the highest grossing entertainment launch of 2022, besting Hollywood's top movies including Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Top Gear: Maverick. The game's three-day opening weekend was the most profitable in the series' 19-year history and the hits keep coming.

According to Activision, the blockbuster crossed $1 billion in worldwide sell-through in its first 10 days. The previous Call of Duty franchise record-holder, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, needed 15 days to cross the milestone back in 2012.

In announcing the achievement, Activision said player engagement continues to trend north. In the first 10 days, MW II players logged more than 200 million hours and played more than a billion matches across Xbox, PlayStation and PC.

No doubt key to MW II's early success is its availability on Steam. This is the first Call of Duty game in five years to launch on Valve's digital distribution platform instead of exclusively via the Battle.net client on PC. A quick check of the Steam top sellers list reveals MW II is leading the pack.

Activision has more in the pipeline. Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 launches on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC on November 16. The free-to-play battle royale game is a direct sequel to the 2020 Warzone title and is technically part of Modern Warfare II, but does not require the base game to play.

Related reading: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II Multiplayer Benchmark

The longer-term outlook is not so clear. Rumors surfaced earlier this year claiming 2023 would be the first year without a new Call of Duty game. Instead, the company is expected to fill the gap with premium and free-to-play Call of Duty experiences which some believe is PR speak for a mix of paid and free DLC for Modern Warfare II and / or Warzone 2.0.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96594-modern-warfare-ii-becomes-fastest-cod-game-reach.html

 

[kira setsu]

I can't even get mad at CoD anymore, thats actually amazing imo, enjoy urself cod fans.

 

[Geralt]

You mustn't release a new game every year. Yes, you can really, but this will destroy the franchise. I would never play a game repeating itself every year despite it is collecting billions of dollars. There are billions of morons too. So, it is just about milking and not real love for what they do.

 

[Nobina]

They should release a new CoD game evey day - One billion dollar speedruns.

 

[m4a4]

Considering they're the ones who always have the highest AAA prices, I'm not surprised.

Might get it later once a sale happens, and if friends are still wanting to play.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Considering they're the ones who always have the highest AAA prices, I'm not surprised.

Might get it later once a sale happens, and if friends are still wanting to play.

You don't see the price drop on these games much nor sales very often from what I've seen.

Look at the CoD: Black Ops games. They still sit at $39.99 for Black Ops, $59.99 for Black Ops II and $59.99 for Black Ops III (these are prices I see on Steam). My point is, you get lucky with a sale sometimes, but generally the CoD franchise is priced stupid, even years after an entry released.

 

[m4a4]

You don't see the price drop on these games much nor sales very often from what I've seen.

Look at the CoD: Black Ops games. They still sit at $39.99 for Black Ops, $59.99 for Black Ops II and $59.99 for Black Ops III (these are prices I see on Steam). My point is, you get lucky with a sale sometimes, but generally the CoD franchise is priced stupid, even years after an entry released.

Yeah I've noticed. But if I can get $10-$20 off within the first year, I'll wait.

They make more than enough money not to care about giving their customers better prices. And the majority of the customers just don't seem to care (so they can get away with it).

 

[Theinsanegamer]

You don't see the price drop on these games much nor sales very often from what I've seen.

Look at the CoD: Black Ops games. They still sit at $39.99 for Black Ops, $59.99 for Black Ops II and $59.99 for Black Ops III (these are prices I see on Steam). My point is, you get lucky with a sale sometimes, but generally the CoD franchise is priced stupid, even years after an entry released.

Well yeah, welcome to digital releases.

On PC, where there is competition, you see sale smroe frequently. On console? Yeah good luck.

You mustn't release a new game every year. Yes, you can really, but this will destroy the franchise. I would never play a game repeating itself every year despite it is collecting billions of dollars. There are billions of morons too. So, it is just about milking and not real love for what they do.

Who cares? Honestly, I mean I want to agree with you, but I was saying this about CoD when ghosts came out. Or advanced warfare. Multi billions of dollars later and people STILL shell out for it.

Activision figured out that gamers are mostly consoomers who will moo when they're milked too hard, but theyll still let it happen, and theyll produce more milk tomorrow. They just never learn. And that behavior is spilling out to every industry nowadays...

 

[MarcusNumb]

Well yeah, welcome to digital releases.

On PC, where there is competition, you see sale smroe frequently. On console? Yeah good luck.
Who cares? Honestly, I mean I want to agree with you, but I was saying this about CoD when ghosts came out. Or advanced warfare. Multi billions of dollars later and people STILL shell out for it.

Activision figured out that gamers are mostly consoomers who will moo when they're milked too hard, but theyll still let it happen, and theyll produce more milk tomorrow. They just never learn. And that behavior is spilling out to every industry nowadays...

Well that's because of the hype, especially for young people. As long as they can follow the trend or the hype, they are satisfied. In long term, we have business like Activision, focusing on milking the maximum profit by producing short term low to medium quality products, and forget about making a really good game, which brought them to where they are now.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Well yeah, welcome to digital releases.

On PC, where there is competition, you see sale smroe frequently. On console? Yeah good luck.
Who cares? Honestly, I mean I want to agree with you, but I was saying this about CoD when ghosts came out. Or advanced warfare. Multi billions of dollars later and people STILL shell out for it.

Activision figured out that gamers are mostly consoomers who will moo when they're milked too hard, but theyll still let it happen, and theyll produce more milk tomorrow. They just never learn. And that behavior is spilling out to every industry nowadays...

That's one of the things I really liked about physical copies of games. If you're patient and okay with not playing the next best thing immediately, usually within 8-12 months you start to see physical copies getting prices lowered to help move the physical inventory out of a store.

Take CoD: Black Ops III. The game released 7 years ago, but it's still selling for the original release price on digital platforms.

But, I snagged a physical copy of the game from my local Target some years ago when the store was working on moving the last of their physical copies of PC games. I ended up getting a copy of Black Ops III for about $10 after taxes and I picked up the very last The Elder Scrolls Anthology (in any Target store, according to their online website) that just happened to be at my Target for about $15 after taxes.

I didn't need TES: Anthology, I had all the games it has in it already. Arena and Daggerfall are free to play (got them stored somewhere on my computer) and I have all the copies of Morrowind (plus expansions), Oblivion and Skyrim physical copies. I picked it up because it was cheap and I resold it for $100+.

As for my copy of Black Ops III, I still have it, unopened in one of my boxes of physical copies of games. I may get around to opening it one day to play the single player campaign (that I hear isn't very good compared to the first two entries in the series). I used to go PC game hunting years ago when physical copies were still a thing....I miss those days.

 

[texasrattler]

I can't even get mad at CoD anymore, thats actually amazing imo, enjoy urself cod fans.

It's nothing new. CoD had made a Billion dollars before. And CoD players are mad over a incomplete game, constant issues, it's worse than the actual beta. Sure some may find it fun but then a random crash or constant dying will happen ruining that lil fun.

It'll die just like MW19 because Warzone 2 is free in 8 days.
Oh and don't forget the paid content in 2023 that you'll need for MWII. That'll likely be $70.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Well that's because of the hype, especially for young people. As long as they can follow the trend or the hype, they are satisfied.

I'm sorry, but the "its young people" thing is pure cope. Teenagers do not have the free cash to make billions for activision. The lions share of profit in gaming has been the 35+ crowd for multiple console generations. Middle age gamers make up the crowd that enabled things like microtransactions, post launch updates, and predatory DLC.

Gamers are Consoomers, they must have the newest shiny, no matter the quality. Same reason garbage like mcdonalds makes billions.

In long term, we have business like Activision, focusing on milking the maximum profit by producing short term low to medium quality products, and forget about making a really good game, which brought them to where they are now.

At what point is short term not short term? Activision has been stripping features out of their games for years, releasing increasingly broken incomplete disasters for over 10 years now. They STILL break sales records and top the industry in profits. It's not just activision. EA has done the same, wringing out more developers then most publishers will ever have. Ubisoft has re released the same game for nearly 20 years now. They still sell, some years more then others, but it STILL works and still prints hundreds of millions every release.

This IS long term thinking, find a big enough group of sheep who will fund your wii tier shovelware for decades on end. There is no incentive to try today, people will happily splurge on mediocrity. Every year the profits go up, the effort goes down, and the people who care are an increasingly irrelevant minority.

 

[Karlos95]

It's nothing new. CoD had made a Billion dollars before. And CoD players are mad over a incomplete game, constant issues, it's worse than the actual beta. Sure some may find it fun but then a random crash or constant dying will happen ruining that lil fun.

It'll die just like MW19 because Warzone 2 is free in 8 days.
Oh and don't forget the paid content in 2023 that you'll need for MWII. That'll likely be $70.

It'll die just like MW19?

More people were playing MW19 than the other 2 games that came out after it.
Warzone sucked in my opinion and what made me end up deleting the MW19 game was it was attached to the game I paid for and every freaking update that was strictly for warzone, I was forced to download.

Played MW19 for a solid 2 and a half years and refused to buy the new ones because it was obviously they were cash grabs and sucked.

 

[Arbie]

So this runs faster than the other games reaching $1B?

 

[BobHome]

Isn't it just wonderful to see how much people love war?
(er, war games)

 

[texasrattler]

It'll die just like MW19?

More people were playing MW19 than the other 2 games that came out after it.
Warzone sucked in my opinion and what made me end up deleting the MW19 game was it was attached to the game I paid for and every freaking update that was strictly for warzone, I was forced to download.

Played MW19 for a solid 2 and a half years and refused to buy the new ones because it was obviously they were cash grabs and sucked.

It died in terms of the playerbase. Warzone took over, just the facts. Sure you can still play mw19 but it's dead. Same goes for older cods, some are still playable but they are dead. The playerbase just isn't there, same thing will happen for mwII, warzone will once again take over n the playerbase will switch over. It's the old CoD rinse n repeat. Out with the old, in with the new.

 

[Karlos95]

It died in terms of the playerbase. Warzone took over, just the facts. Sure you can still play mw19 but it's dead. Same goes for older cods, some are still playable but they are dead. The playerbase just isn't there, same thing will happen for mwII, warzone will once again take over n the playerbase will switch over. It's the old CoD rinse n repeat. Out with the old, in with the new.

Except it wasn't dead? Lol I was playing up until the middle of this year still and heaps of players were still on until the new one came out. Sure you could play warzone but mostly 12vies playing.
Still has 8m 30D active players playing (for a paid game, not free like warzone) So hardly dead. Considering MW2 has just came out, that number should decrease pretty rapidly soon.

 

[texasrattler]

Except it wasn't dead? Lol I was playing up until the middle of this year still and heaps of players were still on until the new one came out. Sure you could play warzone but mostly 12vies playing.
Still has 8m 30D active players playing (for a paid game, not free like warzone) So hardly dead. Considering MW2 has just came out, that number should decrease pretty rapidly soon.

Same thing was for BO zombies. They had active players then I went in to other modes they have nothing, crickets. No one was playing. MW19 uptick is well because of the hype of MW2. MW games are usually pretty good. As usual tho the player base dies which it. Sure you can still play but may not be able to find all modes or may have longer que times.
This is what I meant by being dead not that the game isn't playable.

 

[Karlos95]

Same thing was for BO zombies. They had active players then I went in to other modes they have nothing, crickets. No one was playing. MW19 uptick is well because of the hype of MW2. MW games are usually pretty good. As usual tho the player base dies which it. Sure you can still play but may not be able to find all modes or may have longer que times.
This is what I meant by being dead not that the game isn't playable.

Never really had that problem trying to find a game tbh.
All the hardcore modes I usually play were always full.
Generally more people play the core modes like TDM and Domination. Some game modes just aren't worth playing.