As the followup to one of the most successful games ever made, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was always going to be big. Quite how big not even the market experts could have guessed. In the climax of a 6 month media storm, Infinity Ward's latest offering has netted a very handsome $550 million US Dollars in just five days. That makes the Modern Warfare 2 launch the biggest money maker across all the major entertainment industries, ever. Think of any game, film or book - the Modern Warfare 2 launch beat it. Modern Warfare 2 reigned in any record set by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and positively trashed Grand Theft Auto IV's 5-day sales record by a whopping $50 million.
However, the $550 million is Activision's internal estimation, not hard numbers produced by retail outlet sales figures. Activision produced their estimate in response to market watchdog conflict. By extrapolating figures from GfK Chart-Track's initial statistics, Broadpoint AmTech's analyst Ben Schachter has estimated Modern Warfare 2 shifted 7 million copies worldwide in the first 24 hours of sale. Webdush Securities, a rival analyst, has called that number into question. Chart-Track has since answered, saying they are confident their figure of 1.23 million UK sales are correct as they are based on electronic point-of-sale data.
In keeping with the spirit of money making, Activision's CEO Robert Kotick has been selling some of his shares in the company, to the tune of $40 million. Other statistics of interest include 5.2 million hours played on multiplayer and 11 million achievements unlocked on the first day of play.
