Modern Warfare 3 hits 5-day record of $775 million

Activision has unsurprisingly announced big sales for Modern Warfare 3, topping previous series records for sales and concurrent play.

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If there was ever any doubt that Modern Warfare 3 would continue the Call of Duty series trend of massive launches, those can be put to rest. Activision announced today that it has set a new five-day record with sell-through revenue topping $775 million, overtaking both Black Ops ($650 million) and Modern Warfare 2 ($550 million). That's right: the series is still growing every year.

Of course, this also means new records set for online play. On Xbox Live, 3.3 million unique players logged in on one day, topping the previous record of 2.6 million from Black Ops. It also set a new record of 3.3 million concurrent players, who logged 7 million multiplayer hours on launch day. The PS3 version also hit a new record for simultaneous players on launch day, though Sony was less forthcoming with specific numbers.

In the announcement, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick calls the series "one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world," and notes that retail sales for the entire series have exceeded $6 billion. With a "B."

"As I have said all year, we have been singluarly focused on making a spectacular game for our fans, and nothing else," said Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg in the release. "Our incredible teams at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have done just that. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 continues to thrill core gaming enthusiasts as well as draw new people into the medium, which is not an easy balancing act. But it takes more than a great game. 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."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 17, 2011 7:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Modern Warfare 3 hits 5-day record of $775 million.

    Activision has unsurprisingly announced big sales for Modern Warfare 3, topping previous series records for sales and concurrent play.

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      November 17, 2011 7:07 AM

      Kind of wish I could get my money back for the PC version, considering they lied about there being dedicated server support (as far as I can tell) and we're getting the shaft on the DewXP and CoD elite thing. I don't know why they bother with the platform anymore - the didn't even sell 500K of CoDBlOps from what I can find. That's not even ass wiping money to them any more.

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        November 17, 2011 7:11 AM

        Isn't is kinda trivial to port a game to the PC that is also on the 360? That's ~500k more sales that they might not have gotten?

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          November 17, 2011 8:32 AM

          $60 times 500,000 = MERE POCKET CHANGE FOR PATCH-E

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            November 17, 2011 8:59 AM

            reading comprehension fail?

            patch-e was pointing out the ease of porting from 360 to PC.., if it means another 500k sales, and you remain profitable, yea, mere pocket change.

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        November 17, 2011 7:26 AM

        On the Multiplayer menu, instead of hitting Play, hit Servers......voila - Dedicated Servers.

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          November 17, 2011 7:44 AM

          unranked yes... I think op is referring to ranked servers, you know, the ones everyone wants to play on.

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            November 17, 2011 7:54 AM

            Do you still get XP on the unranked ones or no? If not then as far as I'm concerned those don't exist. Maybe once I've maxed everything out but with all the other games coming out I don't think that'll ever happen.

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              November 17, 2011 8:38 AM

              Exactly. No XP. which means those servers are ghost towns until people are leveled up as much as they want. I'm more pissed off about missing out on our prestige tokens for past games than the DewXP thing. :(

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                November 17, 2011 9:10 AM

                I only had 1 prestige token from MW1, but it was so nice to use it for 2 hours of double XP. Hell I've also gotten like 2 hours of double XP time from the DewXP promotion, just because leveling up is so much faster and way less annoying.

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                November 17, 2011 11:02 AM

                XP? Is this WoW?

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            November 17, 2011 11:13 AM

            What's the deal-breaking difference in terms of getting into a game using matchmaking vs a server browser?

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              November 17, 2011 12:49 PM

              no stat tracking xp-gaining. custom servers can unlock all weapons so unlocks aren't a big issue

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              November 17, 2011 12:58 PM

              Dedicated servers have admins and people acting congenially on them (if you find the right ones obviously) random client-is-also-a-host matchmaking has no controls for booting cheaters and asshats. You can't control any variables of the match, most of them are over far too quickly IMO, it's just shitty compared to having a handful of favorites you can call up when you want.

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      November 17, 2011 7:35 AM

      I'm honestly curious to know their week-over retention rates online. I've been seeing a lot of complaints from heavy CoD fans that they're not having the fun they expected.

      I know over on Twitch.tv the number of MW3 streams (compared to Blops) is heavily down.

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        November 17, 2011 2:01 PM

        I am curious to experience it in a few months. Some long time CoD gamers on twitch.tv say it's good but they were not fawning over it on launch day. They say they're still adapting to it but it sounds like they still haven't got the balance as right or as good as CoD4.

        I know sandyravage and a few of the other big names weren't really feeling the maps. Shotguns are less effective. Explosives are borderline useless. You die even faster than MW2 and there's little reason to use anything else other than assault rifles. There just seems to be a lot less room for different play styles. This whole "gun on gun" attitude seems to have funneled the game into nothing but assault rifle vs assault file. CoD4 didn't do that and I think that's one of the reasons why it's still the best in the series.

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      November 17, 2011 10:42 AM

      $775 million in sales to stores not individual customers. Gotta love game "sales" spin.

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      November 17, 2011 10:43 AM

      They must of made a HUGE profit from this game. They just re-sold MW2 with the name MW3.

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      November 17, 2011 11:24 AM

      You guys.................. :)
      So out of touch. Even when the figures are in front of you :)
      Brilliant.

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      November 17, 2011 12:48 PM

      Assuming Steam Top Sellers are ordered in a descending manner without Steam messing with the ordering, it's behind Skyrim. Of course this is on the PC...

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      November 17, 2011 1:30 PM

      Leigh Alexander was right about $775 million! Just got the details about what, and when wrong back on E3 2010 Bombcast.

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      November 17, 2011 5:44 PM

      bah MW3.. i just got out of an amazing BF3 match though.. (Hardcore mode atw)

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