Prior to the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops earlier this month, it was anticipated that the game could break records – not only those set by previous releases in the series, but records across all publishers and platforms. A mere week after its launch, it was clear that the game would be enjoying mass success, with a staggering $650 million worth of sales recorded in the first five days.
By comparison, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 accrued $550 million worth of sales in the same time period, and though that’s still quite impressive, an 18% increases is even more so. Even today, Black Ops is still selling in droves, and if the momentum keeps up, the game might set further records throughout the holiday season.
There are a couple of interesting factoids that I take away from such news, namely with how a game can enjoy major success while being condemned by so many. Black Ops features certain missions that aren’t exactly a-ok by some, but here we are with sales records. At the same time, despite the game having suffered major multiplayer issues, it hasn’t seemed to deter much of the entire gamer collective.
Still, it can’t be ignored that even today the game is plagued with numerous bugs (just check out Steam’s forums to see what I mean), so hopefully Activision will stop grinning about all of its gained revenue and actually put some of it to work in a meaningful way for faithful CoD fans.
Expectations for the game have risen so much that EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich expects that Black Ops sales through the holidays and in 2011 should eventually propel the game past Modern Warfare 2’s total sales of 20 million-plus copies. Black Ops’ multiplayer mode, which lets a dozen or more players compete with and against each other online, is “phenomenal and addictive,” he says.