Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 declares war on sales records: 12M copies, $738M in first week

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has become the fastest-selling video game in history, crushing previous records set by earlier titles in the Call of Duty franchise. The game lab on Tuesday announced that week-one sales of Modern Warfare 3 totaled 12.3 million units, making it the biggest launch of all time and pulling in an estimated $738 million in revenue. The Xbox 360 version of the game lead sales with more than 7 million copies, a record for game sales on a single console that was previously held by Call of Duty: Black Ops (5.8 million), and 4.8 million copies were sold for the PlayStation 3. Nintendo’s Wii split the remaining half-million copies with the PC version of the game. Activision announced late last week that the new title sold 6.5 million copies and reeled in $400 million during its launch weekend alone, also a record. We reviewed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last week and called it our favorite first-person shooter ever.

Tags: Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Games, Gaming, launch, Modern Warfare 3, playstation, Record, revenue, Sales, xbox

Zach Epstein