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Here’s How The Way Activision Talks About Call Of Duty Launch Weekend Sales Has Changed Over Nearly 20 Years
ActivisionCall of DutyCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 4Modern WarfareMW4SalesXbox
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has the best Metacritic score of any game in the franchise in 15 years, but Activision is being noticeably reserved about its sales performance following the shooter’s first full launch weekend. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the franchise has now crossed $40 billion in lifetime revenue, a big milestone that doesn’t tell us anything about how much Microsoft’s biggest blockbuster of 2026 is actually selling.
The campaign has been praised, including by us, and early impressions around DMZ and multiplayer have trended positive. But MW4 is posting weaker concurrent numbers than Black Ops 6 on Steam, despite no longer being available day-one on Game Pass this year. Concurrent numbers on one storefront don’t tell the whole story, but Activision has yet to share any hard data of its own, let alone any new records this launch has set. That’s in line with how the company spoke about Black Ops 7‘s launch in 2025, and a far cry from the way it used to crow about beating Hollywood blockbusters’ first weekend box office sales in total revenue.
The best-selling Call of Duty game ever is reportedly Black Ops 3, which sold 43 million copies. Activision announced that entry’s opening weekend results as the biggest entertainment launch of the year with $550 million in total sales. 2019’s Modern Warfare is the second best-selling entry at 41 million copies. Activision confirmed it was the biggest Call of Duty launch of the PS4/Xbox One console generation with a launch weekend that “more than doubled the box office opening of Joker.”
Compare that to Sharma’s tweet about MW4, which called it “one of the most celebrated Call of Duty games in its 24-year history, and now $40B in lifetime franchise revenue.” It continued, “An incredible milestone. Congrats to the Activision team. And to the players, thank you for being with us.” Microsoft’s latest earnings call is on October 28. We’ll see if the company provides a more concrete signal about the game’s performance then. In the meantime, here’s how Activision has talked about every Call of Duty launch since 2009:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment with estimated sell-through sales of $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours, according to internal Activision estimates. Modern Warfare 2 was released on Tuesday, November 10th, to worldwide fanfare across the globe, including over 10,000 retail outlets in the U.S. alone which held midnight openings to meet consumer demand. In its first day, the blockbuster title sold through approximately 4.7 million copies in just North America and the United Kingdom, according to internal Activision estimates.
Treyarch’s highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of approximately $360 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, as compared to last year’s estimated day-one sell-through of $310 million for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in North America and the United Kingdom, according to internal Activision estimates.
Call of Duty: Black Ops, marks the second year in a row that the Call of Duty franchise has set day one launch records across all forms of entertainment. In its first day on November 9, the blockbuster title sold through approximately 5.6 million copies in North America and the United Kingdom, as compared to 4.7 million copies for last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, according to internal Activision estimates.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crossed the $1 billion mark in sales since its launch on November 8, 2011, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information. Highlighting the trend of interactive entertainment gaining a greater hold of audiences worldwide, the game achieved th