14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Activision has announced that their newly released Call of Duty: Black Ops has managed to top the records set by its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, for launch day sales, managing to move no less than 5.6 million units in North America and in the United Kingdom and generating 310 million dollars in sales, in just 24 hours.
Thomas Tippl, who is the Chief Financial Officer working at Activision, has stated, “This represents a 16 percent increase over Modern Warfare 2, and sets yet again a new record for entertainment launches across any form of entertainment”.
He added, “There has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening day sales records two years in a row, which represents the pop culture phenomenon that Call of Duty has become.”
The news of a very successful launch for Black Ops means that Treyarch, who were widely seen as the second team for the Call of Duty series, have managed to quickly and without pain ease into the driving seat.
Black Ops takes place during the era of the Cold War and takes the gamer to such battlefields as Russian gulags, the Arctics and Vietnam while spinning a pretty coherent tale involving conspiracies and rogue organizations.
Reviewers have mostly had positive things to say about Black Ops, suggesting that the single player storyline is stronger than that of Modern Warfare 2 and that the multiplayer is less frantic and less reliant on killstreak rewards.
Few doubted that Call of Duty: Black Ops would be a success for Activision but most analysts saw it as selling less copies overall than Modern Warfare 2 this year and over its entire life time.
Activision has already confirmed that a Call of Duty titles is set to be launched in the second half of 2011, although the publisher has not confirmed which studio will be handling development duties and what genre the game will be set in.
Activision has also indicated that it is looking for a partner for Call of Duty on the growing Chinese market, suggesting that it could soon unveil a franchise based free to play model using title.