'Modern Warfare 2' Eclipses $1 Billion in Sales

Amid the massive success of Avatar, there's another record that has already fallen. Activision Blizzard has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has made $1 billion in two months. The Los Angeles Times estimates that the figure is approximately 15 million units, basing its numbers on the eight million games sold for $550 million in the title's first week. That breaks the franchise's previous record by about half a million units, set by 2007's Modern Warfare. It is difficult to compare games to movies or even music when it comes to revenue and sales. For example, Avatar has higher aggregate ticket prices than a movie that isn't presented in IMAX or in 3-D, but it's still about $45 cheaper than the list price for Call of Duty. Would the game sell more if it cost $15? Absolutely. Would Avatar sell the same number of tickets if it cost $60? No. But it wouldn't need to, so long as, apparently, James Cameron could sell around 15 million tickets. If Activision wanted to make the comparison, I would say DVDs or Blu-rays would be a better product to study because of the price per unit and the fact that you buy DVDs for multiple viewings, so the life span of each is longer. Music could be in that category, as well, and it's worth mentioning that only 11 albums have ever sold over 20 million copies, the apex being Thriller and The Eagles Greatest Hits with 29 million and counting. On that basis, call of Duty looks like a monster. This is good news for an industry in need of some: Prior to December sales figures, 2009 was down a little over 10% for games, and slightly more for hardware. The hardest hit sector of games, according to The Times, were music games like Rock Band and Activision's Guitar Hero.

Comments

[Honz Brix]

Ofcourse guitar heros numbers are down. They've released like 10 games in the last 4 years. It's like Saw, enough is enough

[Sloop]

Modern Warfare 2 is a pretty great game. I only own 4 games, but that's the one that I keep going back to. And it definitely makes me want to check out the first Modern Warfare.

[Orinn]

Wait wait wait, we need more saw not more guitar hero.