Call of Duty Revenue Surpasses Star Wars, Harry Potter

[David]

The extraordinarily successful launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, which generated $500 million dollars in its first 24 hours of availability, has propelled the Call of Duty series past notable franchises such as Harry Potter and Star Wars in worldwide box office revenue. The Call of Duty juggernaut has broken records with nearly every new release, with Modern Warfare 3 holding the previous day-one revenue record with $400 million. Before that, the original Black Ops game made an astounding $360 million at release, a record for its time.In a statement, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg likened the annual CoD release to that of an important world-wide cultural event.

Call of Duty has become more than a product people buy, it's a brand people buy into. And every November, we do more than just the launch of a game, we kick off an annual, unofficial but worldwide phenomenon called the Call of Duty season.

Despite the massive number of sales, user and professional reviewers have been relatively reserved in their outlooks compared to that of previous CoD titles. The average Metacritic scores for the game are hovering around 80, noticeably lower than the franchise-defining early CoD games. These reviews will surely change as more people soak in their Black Ops 2 experience, but those of you on the fence may want to hold off on pulling the trigger just yet.Click here to view the article

[Blake]

This is both surprising and some what expected at the same time.

 

Lots of CoD love and fans out there, but more revenue than Star Wars?

[David]

Yeah, I interpreted it as saying the CoD game sales combined are now bigger than the box office revenue of the movies only. No way it's actually bigger than the entire Star Wars empire when you include things like action figures, clothes, etc.

[Jake]

And just like every year, a bit more faith in humanity is lost.