'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3' breaks worldwide sales records

By Hector Cortez Nov 18, 2011, 6:25 GMT

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has broken theatrical box office, book and video game sales records.

Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has broken theatrical box office, book and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars with more than $775 million, exceeding the record of $650 million set a year ago by Call of Duty: Black Ops and $550 million two years ago for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

With this major accomplishment, Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment. Life-to-date the Call of Duty franchise has exceeded $6 billion worldwide in sales. Online play for Modern Warfare 3 is also at record levels and provided a boost to both to Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which ranked as the #2 and #4 top-played Xbox LIVE games for the week of November 7 as eager gamers brushed up on their skills in anticipation of Modern Warfare 3's release.

In addition, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 also set new records on Xbox LIVE. According to Microsoft, more than 7.0 million multiplayer hours were logged playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 by the end of launch day, November 8, a 19% increase over last year's 5.9 million multiplayer hours logged playing Call of Duty: Black Ops last year's launch day. Also, more than 3.3 million unique gamers played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in one day on November 8, up from 2.6 million unique gamers for Call of Duty: Black Ops. And lastly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set a new record for concurrent players on Xbox LIVE with 3.3 million simultaneous users on November 8.

The game also set a new franchise mark for the number of simultaneous online gamers playing Call of Duty on PlayStation  Network on its first day, and was the best-selling video game launch of all time in North America on Amazon.com and at Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Walmart.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is available now for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC.