Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sales on day one: $500 million

Written by Matt Swider on November 16, 2012

CoD Black Ops 2 Sales News: Activision announced CoD: Black Ops 2 sales amount to half a billion dollars in the first 24 hours of its release date for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

CoD Black Ops 2 sales on its release date

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sales figures are in for its Nov. 13 release date and, according to Activision, the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC game reached an estimated sell-through of more than $500 million worldwide in the first 24 hours.

The day one sales of CoD Black Ops 2 best those of CoD MW3, last year’s game, making the franchise “the biggest entertainment launch of the year” for the fourth consecutive year.

CoD: Black Ops 2 breaks sales records

"With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row," said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.

"Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Star Wars,’ the two most successful movie franchises of all time,” he said to put CoD’s lifetime sales into perspective.

Kotick went on to say that the sales, as calculated by Chart-Track, were up despite the today’s “challenged macro-economic environment.”

Other CoD: Black Ops 2 stats

Activision also says that million of fans attended 16,000-plus midnight openings for the launch of CoD: Black Ops 2. It also drove the social conversation, trending on Twitter in 23 cities worldwide.

On YouTube, the live-action CoD: Black Ops 2 trailer that went up on Oct. 29 was viewed more than 30 million times.

To that point, CEO of Activision Publishing Eric Hirshberg said, "Call of Duty has become more than a product people buy, it's become a brand people buy into.”

“Every November we do more than just launch a game, we kick off an annual, unofficial but worldwide phenomenon called Call of Duty season."

The CoD: Black Ops 2 day-one sales figures include the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC versions of the game. There’s a Nintendo Wii U version with a release date of Nov. 18, so the day-one stats can only go up from here.