Record Breaking Modern Warfare 3 Earns $400M in 24 Hours

The moment has arrived. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has delivered on its promise to be the biggest product launch of all time, as its 24 hour sales figures have finally come in.

On day one of launch, Modern Warfare 3 sold 6.5M copies in the US and UK for a grand total of $400M in revenue for parent company Activision. This dethrones last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops which held the record with 6M and $360M respectively.

Despite these massive numbers, this isn’t a surprise for the brand, though they do note that no other property other than Call of Duty has ever broken sales records with consecutive releases three years in a row. It’s an undeniably impressive statistic, but now the question is if they can keep up this kind of seemingly unlimited momentum.

Anything less than a broken record would have been a disappointment, and this year they do face increased competition from Battlefield 3 out two weeks ago, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, out today, and a whole host of other fall game releases that have made the calendar more crowded than ever.

The series still has the magic for fans to auto-purchase, but I’ll refer you to a post I wrote earlier this week that details the challenges the game now faces. As they change less and less with each new installment, longtime fans might grow tired of the same game year after year. Personally, I bought MW3 this year, but after seeing how similar it was to the last one, and with many other games to play, I won’t be putting nearly as much time into it as past installments, and probably won’t purchase any of the upcoming map packs I would usually buy. Furthermore, I think I’m finally ready to say after all these years I won’t buy the next installment unless there are some significant steps forward in the gameplay.

How many more people feel like me? I’m not sure, and we’ll have to wait until next year to find out.  In the meantime, Activision can rest easy as they’ve once again topped themselves. They should enjoy it while they can however, as no empire lasts forever, no matter how dominating it may seem.


Via: Forbes