Right now a story is breaking that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has surpassed $1 billion in worldwide sales. While that is true, we did the math and it is not as impressive as the B-word might suggest. In fact, Modern Warfare is one of the slower selling Call of Duty’s of the past two console generations.
Today, Activision announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has surpassed $1 billion in global sales. Sure, 1,000,000,000 dollars in sales sounds like a monumental achievement, but basically most Call of Duty’s ever have surpassed that billion dollar threshold at some point or another. And when looking back at those sales figures, most of them did it a lot faster than Modern Warfare (2019) did.
Activision stated that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sold more units worldwide in its first 3 days than the first 3 days of any other Call of Duty game this console gen. Below are the current top 10 best-selling games in the U.S. all-time ($ sales): pic.twitter.com/pg4RNIRkUZ
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) October 30, 2019
The most recent Modern Warfare took 3 days to reach $600 million. 54 days after launch, the game has now reached that magic $1 billion sales figure. By comparison, according to GameSpot it took Call of Duty: WWII 47 days to get to a billion, Black Ops 4 took less than a month, Modern Warfare 3 took 16 days and Black Ops II did it in a mere 15 days!
But let’s be clear, reaching a billion in sales is no cake walk. The most acclaimed Modern Warfare-title, Modern Warfare 2 (2009), needed 65 days to reach the magic number. And based on our research some titles in the franchise didn’t even get that far. As far as we can tell Call of Duty: Ghosts, Black Ops III, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare didn’t surpass the billion dollar mark.
Also, Modern Warfare is also on it’s way of becoming the most played CoD for this console generation.
Activision’s Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® continues to drive momentum delivering new highs in multiplayer engagement within the franchise for this console generation. Modern Warfare has outpaced all previous Call of Duty multiplayer experiences of this generation in hours played, hours per player and average daily players on its way to becoming the most played Call of Duty multiplayer in the first 50 days since launch in six years.
There’s a silver lining in there for Modern Warfare (2019) though. Despite the fact that it’s not selling as quickly as previous franchise titles, it is still one of the most played multiplayer games in the series. That means that less people are spending more time in the game. That’s a wholesome thing; the people that are playing are enjoying the hell out of it, which is ultimately what gaming is about.