Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) said sales of "Call of Duty:
Black Ops II," the latest in its war-simulation-shooting series of
games, topped $500 million in retail sales during its first day on
the market.
The game, which puts players front and center in near-future
wars in American cities, went on sale Nov. 13, a week after
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) released "Halo 4," its latest space-age
alien-shooting-adventure title. That game, which was in development
for four years and cost an estimated $40 million to produce, had
more than $220 million in sales in its first 24 hours of
availability despite being exclusively available on Microsoft's
Xbox 360 videogame console.
"Call of Duty," by comparison, was launched not only on the Xbox
but also Sony Corp.'s (SNE, 6758.TO) PlayStation 3 and will be on
Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY, 7974.OK) upcoming Wii U console as well.
Both games cost about $60 apiece.
Activision, based in Santa Monica, Calif., said the $500 million
in global retail sales came after millions of fans had attended
more than 16,000 midnight openings for the game at retail stores
world-wide.
"Every November we do more than just the launch of a game, we
kick off an annual, unofficial but world-wide phenomenon called the
"Call of Duty" season," Eric Hirshberg, head of the company's
Activision Publishing arm, said.
Game-industry veterans are looking to the two titles, as well as
games like Ubisoft Entertainment SA's (UBI.FR) action-adventure
game "Assassin's Creed III," to reverse a protracted slump in
retail-videogame sales that has led to overall sales contractions
for nearly a full year. Analysts have blamed both a lack of new
titles and stale videogame hardware for the falling sales, saying
new consoles like Nintendo's Wii U should help to energize
customers.
"One month of contraction is not a good thing, and we've been
swimming upstream in this category since December," Paul Raines,
chief executive of GameStop Corp. (GME), said in a recent
interview.
The lack of certainty around customer interest in both the Wii U
and traditional videogames has made investors nervous, however,
leading shares of Activision to have fallen by more than 10% and
stock in Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) to have declined by more than a
third so far this year.
"Even the analysts can't forecast this business--it's
unbelievable," Mr. Raines added.
Activision's stock rose 4.7% to $11.06 following the news
Friday.
Regardless of overall industry sales, concerns over whether the
latest in a string of annual installments for "Call of Duty" could
perform have been calmed for now. The sales easily outperformed
last year's title, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," which rang up
$400 million in North America and the U.K. during its first day on
the market. That game went on to top $1 billion in sales within its
first 16 days, beating a record set by the box-office sales of
"Avatar," the feature film that reached that milestone within 17
days.
Write to Ian Sherr at ian.sherr@dowjones.com
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