Modern Warfare 3 pulls $775m in 5 days, sets two XBL records
Modern Warfare 3 has set a new five-day entertainment record, Activision said today, grossing over $775 million worldwide. It has also set a record on Xbox Live by having 3.3 million unique online users in one day.
The monetary record has also bested theatrical box office, book and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars, exceeding the record of $650 million set a year ago by Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the $550 million garnered by 2009's Modern Warfare 2, according to ChartTrack and retail customer sell-through information.
"With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, 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 Robert Kotick, CEO, 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 for Modern Warfare 3 is at record levels and we continue to see high online play for both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which ranked as the #2 and #4 top-played Xbox LIVE games for the week of November 7, according to Major Nelson."
Millions of hours on Xbox Live
In addition to logging 3.3 million unique online users on November 8, which is up from 2.6 million unique gamers for Black Ops, the game set another Xbox Live record by having over 7 million multiplayer hours logged at the end of launch day.
This is a 19% increase over Black Ops' 5.9 million multiplayer hours logged on day one.
"As I have said all year, we have been singluarly focused on making a spectacular game for our fans, and nothing else," said publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg. "Our incredible teams at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have done just that.
"I would also like to thank our incredible team for the pulling off the launch of the year, as well as our retail partners around the world. But most of all, I want to thank our fans. They are our toughest critics, and our biggest supporters, and none of this would be possible without them."
The game also set a new franchise mark for the number of simultaneous online gamers playing on PSN its first day, and was the best-selling video game launch of all time in North America on Amazon.com and at Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Wal-Mart.
"In just over a week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has been hugely successful on PlayStation 3, and continues to drive millions of gamers globally to PlayStation Network with its unprecedented and engaging online multiplayer experience," said Jack Tretton, president and CEO of SCEA.
"The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet, delivering gameplay experiences like no other which is why we're also excited to bring the Call of Duty franchise to our highly-anticipated next generation portable, PlayStation Vita."
Last week, it was announced that the game had sold 6.5 million units in US and UK within its first 24 hours on the market, bringing in around $400 million, which is up 900,000 units over Black Ops' 5.6 million units at launch.
The 2010 shooter garnered $360 million on launch day, compared to Modern Warfare 2's 4.7 million and $310 million at launch .