Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

[Shawn Zipay]

Besting out even the best attempts by Avatar, Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit the $1 billion in sales mark in just 16 days. Avatar, by comparison, hit $1 billion in 17 days.

"Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world," said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. "Call of Duty® as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences are now valuing interactive experiences over passive experiences.

Call of Duty is now amongst that rarified group of sustained franchises like "Star Wars", "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings" and the National Football League (NFL) that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release.

Our Call of Duty Elite is one of the fastest growing new online service ever with more than six million players registered since its launch November 8, 2011 and over one million premium subscriptions sold to date. By comparison, the premium subscription services of Netflix, Hulu Plus, Sirius XM and Xbox® LIVE®, each reached one million paid subscribers after approximately one year.

"Call of Duty has become that rare entertainment franchise that transcends its own genre. Core gamers love it, as our stellar reviews show. But every year, new people are drawn into Call of Duty," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. "And while the franchise continues to set records, our fans still seem to want more, demonstrated by our record setting start on Call of Duty Elite. We are committed to helping everyone connect, compete and improve their game, Call of Duty style."

What is failed to be mention in these figures is the fact that Modern Warfare 3 runs consumers roughly 4-5 times the cost of a movie ticket. It also serves to show just how gullible consumers are who purchase a rehash of a game already released in the same series.

[Anarchy1]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

ಠ_ಠ

[Stryker]

This sends the message to companies that you can create garbage and make big bucks...gaming is indeed heading in a horrible direction.

[RangerXML]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

ヽ(`Д´)ノ

[Eagle101]

All the kids.

[RYKUU]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

If it makes people happy I can see no wrong in this goal being reached, even if it is 12 year old kids.

I should congratulate Activision on this goal, there would be many, many companies that would dream of sales like this.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

If it makes people happy I can see no wrong in this goal being reached, even if it is 12 year old kids.

I should congratulate Activision on this goal, there would be many, many companies that would dream of sales like this.

...Yeah... But I would rather another Company acheive this goal. The way was paved with broken promises, tread over gamers, blatant lies and villainy.

[RYKUU]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

...Yeah... But I would rather another Company acheive this goal. The way was paved with broken promises, tread over gamers, blatant lies and villainy.

Legally, regarding the game content they have 'broken' promises yes, but they are not legally binding and have no responsibility to fulfill these promises.
They have produced a product: CoD, and found a target market/segment that will eat up this game. This is a huge business success and I think they are just as deserving as every other 'big business'.

This has not paved the way for broken promises however, games which have promised so much (Dead Island) have not succeeded and not met expectations.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

Legally, regarding the game content they have 'broken' promises yes, but they are not legally binding and have no responsibility to fulfill these promises.
They have produced a product: CoD, and found a target market/segment that will eat up this game. This is a huge business success and I think they are just as deserving as every other 'big business'.

This has not paved the way for broken promises however, games which have promised so much (Dead Island) have not succeeded and not met expectations.

I guess, they succeed as "Businesspeople". But as a gamer, well, I will admit, a PC gamer, being handed the same copy-pasted crap/Overly similar to the previous model videogame does not make it deserving of such an honour. Then again, the critically acclaimed movies don't often make millions during their releases. Well, I think some of us can agree that MW3 is the equivalent of J.C's Avatar.

[nemes1s3000]

They reached their goal by being slimy little rats.

[RYKUU]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

They reached their goal by being slimy little rats.

However they still reached it, and consumers are willing to pay for a product that this company has and can produce.

#1 purpose of a business: Make profit, everything else is secondary.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

I think this whole thing is a combination of both arguments:

They are good at being a business, and the world is full of dipshits. Put 2 and 2 together and you get 5 because they all say so.

[RYKUU]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

I think this whole thing is a combination of both arguments:

They are good at being a business, and the world is full of dipshits. Put 2 and 2 together and you get 5 because they all say so.

This. If you can exploit a market with maximum success then you have done something impressive. This does take talent, if not then a lot more people would be doing it.

[eradicator8]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

Propably also the fact that you do not need to spend 1.000 Euro on upgrades for your PC. It is just plug and play. EA/DICE could learn from that and stop inventing a load of crap-cakes that only works on the few and leave the rest of us with a bad taste in our mouth learning that you cannot run the game with a GTX560 TI because it is factory overclocked.
WHAT A LOAD OF BULL!!!!

[Stev0esque]

Re: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion Sales in Just 16 Days

Propably also the fact that you do not need to spend 1.000 Euro on upgrades for your PC. It is just plug and play. EA/DICE could learn from that and stop inventing a load of crap-cakes that only works on the few and leave the rest of us with a bad taste in our mouth learning that you cannot run the game with a GTX560 TI because it is factory overclocked.
WHAT A LOAD OF BULL!!!!

Actually, its worse than that. You ask 80% of that target market and they would be surprised you can even play games on computers. Then you get games that are so poorly optimised for graphics cards despite using DX9 renderers (from what I heard of black ops, Im referring to this). As resource heavy as it was, at least BF3 took use of the GPU and not primarily the CPU as BC2 and BlOps did. And I guess stock setting GPU users are the ones not left in the dust, Im using a stock 6870 and it runs pretty good. No offence, but calling yourself "The rest of us" and others "A few" is not very logical when you are using the Factory OCd GPUs. I didn' know most people used Factory OC'd GPUs