Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 has become the biggest entertainment launch of the year, Activision has announced, generating a worldwide revenue of $550m within its first three days on sale.
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Activision has a new partnership with Sony’s PlayStation as the preferred partner platform, and the new game set a platform record for first-day sellers (digital full game, by units moved). Additionally, fans played more than 75 million hours online in its opening three days.
Activision has revealed that retail sales of Black Ops III are up both on last year’s Advanced Warfare and 2013’s commercially disappointing Ghosts.
As usual, the Call of Duty franchise has made serious bank for Activision.
That suggests Black Ops 3 is the biggest Call of Duty game since Treyarch’s own Black Ops 2, which launched in 2012. “But more importantly, our fans are engaging more deeply with the franchise than ever before”, said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. Downloaded copies of the game for Xbox One and PS4 jumped by almost 100 percent compared to comparable sales for Advanced Warfare.
“The Call of Duty: Black Ops III launch is bigger than any game, any movie, or any entertainment launch this year”.
This is a great achievement, but the Call of Duty franchise has done better.
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That figure makes Black Ops 3 the biggest entertainment launch of the year, beating Jurassic World and all other theatrical box office, music, and book launches. Of course we know that Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens will blow all of this out of the water when it releases this Christmas. It was also the most streamed and viewed title “of any game launch in 2015”, as reported by Twitch.
