14 DAY TRIAL // Activision Blizzard, as the publisher of the first person shooter blockbuster Call of Duty: Black Ops, has sent out data showing that more than 600 million man hours have been spent with the video game in the close to two months since it was released worldwide on November 9, on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
The game has been played by more than 20 million players across all platform, which means that the average play time for one gamer during one day stands at about 87 minutes, which is apparently more than the average time the normal Facebook user spends on the social network time.
For comparison, Microsoft has offered information that showed that for Halo: Reach players registered more than 50 million man hours of play in the first week, with the number of players bigger than the 20.5 million that watched the final episode of the well-known television series Lost.
Call of Duty: Black Ops has already been confirmed as being the best sold video game of 2010 and is, along with the 3D movie Avatar, the only entertainment product to have gone past the 1 billion dollars generated in revenue.
Eric Hirshberg, who is the chief executive officer of Activision Publishing, has stated when the information was released, “The $1 billion milestone is staggering, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The true measure of Black Ops' success lies in the millions of hours that people are investing in this game and this community. Call of Duty has in many ways become one of the world's most engaged social networks.”
Bobby Kotick, the CEO of the entire Activision Blizzard, has also chimed in, saying, “Media is evolving and today the social aspects of technology are more important to the overall entertainment experience than ever before. Call of Duty creates a shared sense of identity for its community and is as integral to their social lives as any other form of digital communication.”