Call of Duty: Black Ops has shown a roaring success in it's first month of sales, as 8.4 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide, already putting it in seventh place in NPD's top ten games (by sales) of all time.
To break it down between consoles, Gamasutra calculated that 4.9 million copies of Black Ops have been sold to Xbox 360 users, 3.1 million copies found their way into Playstation 3's, and the remaining 400,000 units were split between Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, and PC versions of the game. In regards to the PC sales however, we could potentially be looking at a larger number, as games which were sold digitally online (such as through Steam) were not included in NPD's 8.4 million figure.
The console ratio sales has taken a turn when comparing to last year's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which saw PS3 sales beating the Xbox 360 in the game's release. Also, to compare Black Ops' first month's sales to Modern Warfare 2 further, it shows a big jump for the Call of Duty series with Modern Warfare 2 selling 6 million copies in its first month – which is by no means a small amount – but Black Ops is showing how popular the game series is truly getting. Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare each hit the 2 million mark in their first month of sales, showing even further how much the series' popularity has grown in just a few years.
Black Ops publisher Activision have been keeping quiet about details regarding sales, although they did reveal that they had made around $650 million in the first 5 days of the game's launch which is their largest five-day sales record so far.
When speaking to Gamasutra, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that "The number of people playing online and the number of hours they are playing demonstrates how online gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment and certainly validates Activision Blizzard’s leadership role in online entertainment,”
It's clear that with 3 Call of Duty games already in NPD's top ten list (holding the number 4, 7, and 9 spots) that the series is already going down as one of the most successful franchises of all time, which is especially impressive when you consider the NPD list doesn't include PC games.
Via: PCMag