Modern Warfare 3 Makes Record Sales in the First 24 Hours of Launch

Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), the major online , PC, console and mobile games publisher has broken its own earlier record for the biggest entertainment launch ever by garnering more than $400 million on the first day sales of the newest offering of its Call of Duty franchise titled “Modern Warfare 3” in the United States and Great Britain alone.

Modern Warfare 3 went on sale across the world on Tuesday. Activision Blizzard’s chief executive officer Bobby Kotick said that the launch of the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the biggest launch of an entertainment offering of all time in any medium and the company has achieved its record sales from only 2 territories itself. The total sales of its Call of Duty series of games is said to have exceeded the box office collections of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movie series.

The total sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in the first 24 hours of launch was more than what its rival Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS)’s  Battlefield 3 managed to sell in the first week of its release. Around 13,000 shops across the world opened at midnight on Tuesday to sell the game.

After the launch of Modern warfare 3, Activision Blizzard has also upped its forecasts for this year. According to the analysts, the new title is going to match the 25 million sales of the earlier title Black Ops easily. This game has also broken the Xbox Live record for having the most number of players online at the same time, said Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

The game contains graphic violence in real world settings and it has been awarded 18 certificates by the BBFC. Modern Warfare 3 continues from where the Modern Warfare 2 was left off with the Special Forces hunting for the Russian terrorist. Just like the other recent Call of Duty titles, there had been some objections raised on the scenes depicting an Underground train being blown up for its alleged similarities with the London tube bombings of July 2005 and there was a cry for these scenes to be removed. BBFC did not require any scenes to be removed, but it did point out the 18 certificate and said that the game is completely inappropriate for children. The call of Duty series has been in the market since 2003 and has sold more than 100 million copies of various titles until now.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.