Call Of Duty: Black Ops Claims ‘Biggest Entertainment Launch In History’
Nov. 11 2010 - 2:47 pm
By OLIVER CHIANG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/CoD_Black_Ops_cover.png

Activision Publishing just announced the first-day sales of its newest hit videogame Call of Duty: Black Ops, saying that it is the biggest entertainment launch in history.

In the first 24 hours, Black Ops took in $360 million in the U.S. and U.K., selling 5.6 million units, according to Activision’s internal estimates. This breaks the previous record, set last year by the previous title in the series Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with first-day sales of $310 million in the U.S. and U.K. through the 4.7 million units sold.

The company thinks that strong sales will continue throughout the week. “We are on track to outperform last year’s five-day global sales record of $550 million,” said Bobby Kotick, chief executive Activision Blizzard (parent company of Activision Publishing), in a note.

Developed by the Treyarch game studio, Black Ops is a first-person shooter game that has players undertake missions and follow a storyline set during the Cold War. Reviews of the game have been positive, with the Xbox 360 version receiving a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100.

Reviewers have praised not just the gameplay, but the story and cinematic experience of the game. Indeed, Black Ops draws from top Hollywood talent. Actors Ed Harris and Gary Oldman are among the big names that provided character voices for the game. David S. Goyer, a writer for the 2008 movie blockbuster Batman: The Dark Knight, also worked on the script for Black Ops.

It’s another sign of the videogame industry’s rise compared to other forms of media. In comparison, James Cameron’s 3-D hit movie Avatar, for instance, took in $232 million in its opening weekend.

Some analysts, however, looking at the longer term, are concerned that Activision has become too reliant on its Call of Duty franchise, and doesn’t have enough outside hits of the same size. But Activision thinks that fewer mega-hits is an industry-wide phenomenon.

“The big hits are getting bigger, and the top 10 hits in the industry are taking a larger percentage of the revenue than ever before,” says Eric Hirshberg, Activision Publishing’s new CEO, who came on board last July. He added, “People are reaching into their pockets to spend $60 less frequently across the board.”

One of the main ways Activision and the industry have been looking to offset this decline is to extend the lifetime of a game through online multiplayer features and matches and additional content for purchase on game networks like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. In August, Activision announced that sales of Call of Duty “map packs” — downloadable add-on content — had surpassed 20 million units, or around $300 million in revenue.

“The consistent stream of digital content and extending the life of a game has never before been more important,” says Hirshberg. “We’re looking at ways to amplify that,” though Hirshberg declined to elaborate on what specifically the company would do in the future.

Meanwhile, Black Ops has drawn some controversy over some of its content already. Cuba yesterday denounced a mission in the game that involves a CIA attempt to assassinate a young Fidel Castro. “What the United States couldn’t accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually,” said an article posted on Cubadebate, a state-run news website, according to a report by the AP.

http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/11/11/call-of-duty-black-ops-claims-biggest-entertainment-launch-in-history/

Shoot 'em ups(my term) of all kinds and sports games overwhelmingly predominate the market sales wise. Young males are the backbone of the market and the amount of time invested in play is remarkable, some people never turn the machines off, because of the tedious boot up I guess. And another guess, poor folks use these machines more intensely than others. Makes me glad I'm a geezer.

They were in lines all night for the release. I didn't know it was about assassinating Fidel Castro. X( So I guess this is the new round of anti-commie indoctrination for the kiddies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101111/tc_afp/cubauspoliticsitvideogamesentertainment

Cubans upset at video game that aims to kill Fidel Castro





<snip>

The game's first mission is to assassinate Fidel Castro before the 1962 missile crisis, the moment when the Cold War came closest to tipping into a full-blown nuclear conflict.

Later missions take gamers inside the former Soviet Union and southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

Castro, now 84, led Cuba from the 1959 revolution until he stepped down for health reasons in 2006. His brother Raul Castro is currently the president of the communist nation.

On one hand, the game "glorifies the attempts that in an illegal manner the United States government planned against Castro," while on the other it "stimulates sociopathic behavior among American children and adolescents, the main consumers" of those games, Cubadebate said.

US attempts to assassinate Castro were approved during the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Cuban exiles were responsible for most attempts on Castro's life starting in the 1970s.

"What does not fit in the mind of sane people is how the American society allows the proliferation of these games," read a posting by a writer belonging to the pro-government Bloggers and Correspondents of the Revolution (http://bloguerosrevolucion.ning.com).

"Call of Duty: Black Ops" from the Activision unit of France's Vivendi follows "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", last year's biggest grossing console game with more than 20 million units sold around the world.

Expectations for the Cold War chapter are high: IT marketing firm IDC forecasts that 11.7 million copies will be shifted in the United States by the end of the year alone.



I think Red Dawn is getting remade soon too.

but aside from that, I think you guys generally read too much into video games and graphic violence and that stuff.

The new Mortal Kombat is supposed to be WAYYY over the top though. Wish I owned a system to play it, heh.

it would be Soviets kicking Nazi ass all over hell and gone. ;) Violence I don't mind so much, though I mostly play Civ. I'm not likely to take over an entire continent in real life because I play that. But I notice things in it, that are probably a result of the biases of the game designers. Communism (for example) is only achieved by completing Liberalism as a technology and I think you need Nationalism too.

Starting back in the 60's there were a scad of 'tactical/strategic simulation' board games. WWII games were the most popular, and while they were subtly weighted towards the Nazis one could play the Soviets and win. When computer gaming got suitably sophisticated games based on the board games appeared, some were very well done and were a godsend for the sometimes overwhelming book-keeping which became automated, but you still moved your little military symbols on a hex grid. As graphics got better and better it seemed that they became more important than strategy, tactics or historical context, just a bunch of eye candy for boys playing soldier, but remaining , as always, vehicles of ruling class values.

http://i.ebayimg.com/06/!BrTmF6w!Wk~$(KGrHqUOKj0Eu,nUc,5TBLzIV7!keg~~_35.GIF

Has the kids play Risk, it teaches geography, but also imperialistic tactics by doing...darling little emperor wannabees! ;) ( I love playing Risk, and sink my battleship, actually... and then there's Monopoly....)

Risk teaches the necessity of treachery, ya can't win without it, there can only be One. It does teach geography, but skewed, why is Africa smaller and of less value than North America? Hmmm....

The prereq is scientific method (in acknowledgment that communism is not a religious doctrine but a science). And the state property civic is obviously better than the free market civic.

I never made that connection with the scientific method prereq, thank brother cakes, that shines a new light there. Damn, now I'm going to have to fire up a game...I think I'll play Stalin. :grin: I'm actually really horrible at this game, but I enjoy it. I always make my civs into cultural paradises and then get mowed down by rivals.

Especially for the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Back in the early-to-mid 1990s, when the FPS genre was new, all of the titles involved either slaying Nazis (Wolfenstein 3D), aliens (Blake Stone, Corridor 7, Duke Nukem 3D), or various monsters (Doom, Heretic, Hexen). Nowadays, it is all just pro-imperialist and anti-communist propaganda, like the game mentioned in the original post.