Thaindian News

SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) — Activision Publishing on Thursday announced that the Call of Duty: Black Ops video game set a new five day entertainment industry record after earning over $650 million worldwide.

The Treyarch’s video game exceeded Activision’s previous five-day worldwide record of $550 million set by last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Last week, the controversial video game set a new opening day sales record with approximately $360 million in North America and United Kingdom alone.

“Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for two consecutive years across all forms of entertainment,” said Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard. “The title’s success illustrates the mass appeal of interactive entertainment as millions of consumers are choosing to play Call of Duty: Black Ops at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media.”

In addition to breaking sales records, Call of Duty: Black Ops has also set two new records on Xbox Live. According to Microsoft on November 9, more than 5.9 million multiplayer hours were logged playing the game by end of launch day and over 2.6 million unique gamers played the video game that day.

“The number of people playing online and the number of hours they are playing demonstrates how online gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment and certainly validates Activision Blizzard’s leadership role in online entertainment,” Kotick added.

The video game has also recorded huge sales on the Playstation 3 system and is the best-selling video game launch of all time on Amazon.com and at GameStop as it registered the highest number of pre-orders of any video game to date.

However, the newest member of the Call of Duty franchise has received some critics due to its content. In one of the levels, players are ordered to infiltrate and kill a young Fidel Castro. In response, the Cuban government has harshly criticized the video game.

Cuba said that Call of Duty: Black Ops consists of a violent role-playing that glorifies assassination and will turn American children into sociopaths. The Cuban government alleges that the United States is trying to accomplish in a virtual world what they were unable to fulfill in the past, referring to the many assassination attempts that Castro survived.