Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ($310 Million)

["Nerve-Damage"]

Call of Duty(R): Modern Warfare(R) 2 Shatters Opening Day Sales Records With Approximately $310 Million in North America and United Kingdom Alone

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Nov. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today that Infinity Ward’s much-anticipated Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2 has become the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment with estimated sell-through sales of $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours, according to internal Activision estimates.


Modern Warfare 2 was released on Tuesday, November 10th, to worldwide fanfare across the globe, including over 10,000 retail outlets in the U.S. alone which held midnight openings to meet consumer demand. In its first day, the blockbuster title sold through approximately 4.7 million copies in just North America and the United Kingdom, according to internal Activision estimates.

 

[I.S.T.]

Pardon my language, but I do believe Halo 3 was just bitchslapped.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Pardon my language, but I do believe Halo 3 was just bitchslapped.

More like, manhandled...

 

[Rangers]

Pardon my language, but I do believe Halo 3 was just bitchslapped.

Shouldn't this be more like GTA4?

Most previous sales records are held by GTA4, not Halo 3, I believe. Naturally, it would be hard for a single platform game to compete with a multiplatform one.

Well, we already know COD6 sold 1.2m in UK, which leaves "only" 3.5m in USA, across 2 platforms, very impressive, but perhaps not quite as sky high as I expected in the USA.

I wonder if COD6 360 can top Halo 3's 3.3m NPD 1st month?

Anyways COD6's numbers are going to be pretty ridiculous. I imagine it probably sold about as much in the rest of the EU as the UK, so another 1.2 there, so that would be 5.9, not counting a few places like Canada. So, first week, 10m would seem likely? And overall, lifetime, 20m?

 

[I.S.T.]

Shouldn't this be more like GTA4?

Most previous sales records are held by GTA4, not Halo 3, I believe. Naturally, it would be hard for a single platform game to compete with a multiplatform one.

Well, we already know COD6 sold 1.2m in UK, which leaves "only" 3.5m in USA, across 2 platforms, very impressive, but perhaps not quite as sky high as I expected in the USA.

I wonder if COD6 360 can top Halo 3's 3.3m NPD 1st month?

Anyways COD6's numbers are going to be pretty ridiculous. I imagine it probably sold about as much in the rest of the EU as the UK, so another 1.2 there, so that would be 5.9, not counting a few places like Canada. So, first week, 10m would seem likely? And overall, lifetime, 20m?

I did not know that at the time I made my post. I found out like an hour later, from Joystiq. >.<

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, to be fair to Halo 3, this is a multiplatform release. And as small as they may be, even PC sales can be listed in that figure. I know for certain that a lot of guys have ordered it through Steam, it even set an internet bandwith usage record for the country

 

[czekon]

and install base when halo3 was realased was nowhere near to ps3+x360+pc install base for codmw2.
Anyway impressive but no supraise here this game was already like over 2 milions in preorders.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Nevertheless, the bar for Reach is certainly set high now.

It'd also be quite interesting to see if an FPS game can become the best selling title of this generation (beyond Wii Sports though). Or if it can beat any other game on the PS3, considering how it was the X360 that was originally called the "FPS console".
At this time it seems that GTA4 is the best selling PS3 game, and of course Halo 3 rules the 360.

 

[wco81]

Hope not. FPS is the bane of creativity in game design.

Seems like games are more story-driven than they used to be. So like action/war movies, FPS with similar plots and themes become popular.

Meanwhile, gaming becomes homogenized.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hotcakes vs. Waffles moved here. Sorry for the collateral damage; there was problems moving posts and editing.

 

[Sonic]

You lost my post! Damnit.

I said something like:

These are really awesome sales and some amazing instant profit. Kudos to all the devs, artists, entire team who worked on this project. Must be an amazing feeling to have worked on something and have it turn out like this in terms of sales. It's like in one day they received the revenue from what two months of WoW's subscriptions would be.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You lost my post! Damnit.

Sorry about that. A couple got lost in the ether

 

[Cheezdoodles]

It's like in one day they received the revenue from what two months of WoW's subscriptions would be.

I'd much rather have the WoW subscriptions and basically have a licence to print money


I dunno how on earth they get away with charging 10bucks per months, they are having like 80-95% profit on that.

CoD6 will sell insanely well. Wonder if they can get 20+ million. They probably can

 

[zed]

Yes WOW is a moneyprinter but there was a recent article + from memory ~50% of the users were in asia (china chiefly) but they only generated ~5% of the revenue, thus u cant go 12million subscribers * $10 a month

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/easy-victory-for-modern-warfare-2-in-uk-charts

With first week UK sales reaching 1.78 million units
xbox360 57%
ps3 40%
pc 3%

Mod edit : removed OT PC talk. Start a discussion in the PC forum for that, thanks.

 

[zed]

Chart-Track also said that the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 sold over 1 million units in the first week

from the looks of it
in the UK COD MW2 on the xbox360 has sold more than 1 million copies in its first week

it took halo3 ~90 weeks to reach that barrier
and GTA4 (xbox360) ~50 weeks

Theres a chance halo3 has already been outsold, we knew it was going to be big but I dont think anyone thought it was gonna be this big

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Theres a chance halo3 has already been outsold, we knew it was going to be big but I dont think anyone thought it was gonna be this big

You mean in UK on 360 or across all platforms in the world, or one point between those?

 

[zed]

In the UK

btw new article from today, though its old news since gamasutra articles from years past

If you're making a DS game don't even bother on quality, just ask for a bunch of marketing dollars," he said. "This actually suggests to developers that if you can, sacrifice quality to get a higher marketing budget."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ame-revenue-three-times-more-than-high-scores

The secret to MacDonalds success

 

[Acert93]

Kind of out of place in a CoD4 MW2 thread, don't you think?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Kind of out of place in a CoD4 MW2 thread, don't you think?

Yah not sure what he's trying to imply here. And an odd divergence. If he's implying that marketing dollars is pushing MW2 rather than gameplay, I'd argue that UC2 has gotten FAR more marketing in the US and hasn't seen nearly this level of sales.

Regards,
SB

 

[obonicus]

Maybe that discussion could have its own thread? To go back on-topic, MW2 has earned $550M in the first 5 days. This is $50M above GTA4's previous record (GTA4 wasn't a simultaneous PC release, but if the 3% number extends more generally then that shouldn't make much of a difference, record-wise).