Activision’s shooter made $1 billion in 16 days.
Remember Avatar? That James Cameron joint with the blue guys and the jingoistic storyline? Remember how much everyone went crazy for a while and waited in line to see it in 3D, paying higher ticket prices and making a metric crapton of money (or $1 billion) in just 17 days? Well, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 reached the same milestone one day quicker. That’s right, MW3 hit the $1 billion mark in 16 days, prompting Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to continue to place CoD in the entertainment franchise pantheon.
“Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world” said Kotick in a release today. “Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.”
Take that, movies, TV and books. Videogames are coming for you!
The same press release put Call of Duty on the same shelf as the most well-known entertainment franchises ever created. “Call of Duty is now amongst that rarified group of sustained franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the National Football League (NFL) that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release,” said Activision.
It may seem odd that Activision lumped its military shooter CoD with sports and fantasy stories, but that’s all a part of the messaging. The videogame publishing giant wants CoD to be an institution that continues for a long, long time, and hopefully to rival the overall profitability of those properties.
Given that 30 million people currently play Call of Duty games and the Elite subscription service has one million subscribers already, it doesn’t look like EA or anybody else is going to topple Activision’s shooter any time soon.
Source: Activision
