Black Ops 2 Earns $500 Million in 24 Hours, Biggest Entertainment Launch of the Year

Activision Blizzard has just put out a press release revealing that its latest title by Treyarch, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, has earned well over $500 million in its first 24 hours of retail sales, making it the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth consecutive year for the Call of Duty series. The figures provided by Activision were based on research by Chart-Track, retail customer sell-through, and internal company estimates.

"With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row," said Activision boss Bobby Kotick. "Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for "Harry Potter" and "Star Wars," the two most successful movie franchises of all time. Given the challenged macro-economic environment, we remain cautious about the balance of 2012 and 2013." 

Activision has good reason to remain cautious given the less-than-stellar sales figures of the games it released earlier in the year, including Prototype 2, which we reviewed.

"Call of Duty has become more than a product people buy, it's become a brand people buy into.  And every November we do more than just launch a game, we kick off an annual, unofficial but worldwide phenomenon called Call of Duty season," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. "I want to thank our incredible team at Treyarch for making an amazing game, everyone at Activision for making this brand a force of nature and our retail partners for their unprecedented support of this franchise. But most importantly I want to thank our millions of fans for their continued support and loyalty and for making us better every day."

Despite the game’s success at retail, it has faced a number of technical problems on the PlayStation 3—some of which continue to be fixed as of the time of this posting.

The game is currently available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. A Wii U version of the title is forthcoming.