Modern Warfare 3 smashes sales records with $775M sold in five days

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 broke sales records with a five-day tally of more than $775 million in worldwide sales, publisher Activision Blizzard announced today. To date, Call of Duty games have sold more than $6 billion worldwide.

The game went on sale on Nov. 8 (see our game review) and generated more than $400 million in revenue in its first 24 hours, with more than 6.5 million copies sold for at least $60 each. The game has so far beaten sales of last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops and is on track to be the best-selling video game of all time — a title held by Black Ops. Black Ops sold $650 million in five days last year, while Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 sold $550 million in five days two years ago.

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“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 Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard. “Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded $6 billion worldwide, which makes Call of Duty one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world. 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.”

Online play is at record levels. Microsoft said more than 7 million hours were logged for multiplayer Modern Warfare 3 by the end of the first day, up 19 percent from 5.9 million hours for Black Ops a year ago. More than 3.3 million unique gamers played Modern Warfare 3 on Nov. 8, up from 2.6 million a year earlier. The new record for concurrent (simultaneous) players is 3.3 million, set on Nov. 8 on Xbox Live.

The franchise also set a new record for online play on the PlayStation Network. The game was the best launch of a video game on Amazon.com, Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Walmart. Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, said the franchise continues to draw core gaming enthusiasts as well as new people.

The data is based on sell-through information at retailers and Charttrack sales data. The only hiccup in the launch is that the Call of Duty Elite social networking service has had outage problems.