Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 breaks sales record: $400 million in 24 hours for CoD MW3

Written by Matt Swider on November 11, 2011

CoD sales figures news: Sales figures are in for CoD MW3 in the US, UK for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC. It breaks the record number of CoD Black Ops day-one sales.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC has, unsurprisingly, achieved record-breaking sales figures for its first day on the market in the United States and United Kingdom, according to Activision. With an estimated sell-through of more than $400 million and 6.5 million units in 24 hours, CoD MW3 is now the biggest entertainment launch ever. Which sales king is it replacing in the number one slot? None other than last year's Call of Duty release, CoD Black Ops. Which game did Black Ops replace last year? The previous year's Call of Duty release, CoD MW2. I think you're beginning to see the trend.

Also read: Gaming Target's Call of Duty: MW3 review
"We believe the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium, and we achieved this record with sales from only two territories," said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. "Other than Call of Duty, there has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening day records three years in a row. Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise exceed worldwide theatrical box office for СStar Wars' and СLord of the Rings,' two of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time."

The consecutively higher sales totals make this the third year in a row that Call of Duty has set day one launch records across all forms of entertainment. Activision boasts that Уthis is something no other entertainment franchise in any medium has ever accomplished.Ф That proud statement comes from the same company that claimed for the game that this was Уthe biggest video game in historyФ in its MW launch trailer. I guess there's some merit to that ridiculed claim now.

By comparison, CoD: Black Ops sold approximately $360 million in its first day in the US and UK, while CoD MW2 had an estimated day-one sell-through rate of $310 million in the two countries. All of these stats are courtesy of Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information, both presented to us this morning by Activision.

Not through with the numbers game just yet, Activision says that millions of fans attended more than 13,000 midnight openings at retail stores around the world and that, according to Microsoft, after just two days, the number of gamers playing simultaneously on Xbox Live set a new peak concurrency record.

All $400 million isn't going into Activision's coffers, however. The company announced that it is donating $3 million to the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit, public benefit corporation that seeks to provide job placement and training for veterans. Previously, the company has donated more than $1.5 million in grants and scholarships to veterans' organizations across the country since it was conceived by Bobby Kotick in November of 2009.

Just in time for Veterans Day. It's nice to see that profits from the FPS game are going back to the veterans who fight not on virtual Call of Duty maps, but on the real-life battlefield where there is no reset button. Gaming Target will have more CoD MW3 sales figures news as it becomes available in the next week, when we will almost certain see MW3 surpass the sales numbers of CoD Black Ops' first five days, $650 million.

source: Activision