Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Sells 12 Million Copies, Pulling In $3/4 Billion In First Week

There’s no doubt that Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was one of, if not the most anticipated game in history. Just ask one of the workers at the 13,000 worldwide outlets providing special midnight openings for last Tuesday’s launch – or indeed one of the many millions of avid gamers that queued up to grab their copy.

MW3

By keeping each title in the series relatively similar in terms of gameplay, whilst adding new maps, weaponry and multiplayer options to keep things interesting, publishers Activation – along with the large army of backroom staff – have continued to entice gamers in their droves year in, year out.

Watching the Call of Duty franchise continually smash its own sales records is similar to watching an almost super-human Olympic athlete continue to break their own records: we all know it’s going to happen, the question is, by how much?

Well, the figures for first-week sales are nothing short of astonishing. 12 million copies of Modern Warfare 3 have been shifted during the past week, with an estimated $738 million having been counted in revenue. Considering it took Call of Duty: Black Ops around 5 weeks to reach the billion dollar mark, the latest iteration seems to have that one in the bag, too.

Reviews of the title have been positive on the whole, with Metacritic giving it 89/100 based on 62 critiques at the time of writing.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sold 5.8 million of the 12 million copies, leading the PlayStation 3’s number by an entire million. Although you don’t need to be online to play Call Of Duty, it certainly heightens the experience a great deal, and Redmond-based Microsoft must be celebrating a victory which sees consumers favor its Xbox Live paid service over Sony’s PlayStation Network, which is free to use.

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Considering the initial Xbox was quite a few years behind the PlayStation legacy, the fact that it is now the most popular console is an amazing achievement – attributable not only to Live, but also to its exclusive FPS Halo, which still maintains huge popularity despite the dominance of COD.

It seems almost inevitable that this time next year, the release of Call of Duty 9 (or whatever it shall be otherwise entitled) will continue to break records and marriages alike as addiction reaches fever pitch.

(via BGR)

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