While James Cameron doesn’t have anything to worry about when it comes to the final tally of his Avatar 3D epic, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 did the director’s film in the race to $1 billion. MW3 earned $1 billion in just 16 days. It took Avatar 17 days to reach that milestone. It’s worth noting that Activision chose not to release the new game in 3D after experimenting with 3D in Black Ops last year across all platforms.

The latest installment in the franchise from developers Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games made $775 million in just five days. That number includes the $400 million in sales the new game accomplished in its first 24 hours at retail in North America and the United Kingdom.

Gamers are sticking with the game’s online experience, logging over 7 million hours to date. The game has been a huge hit on Xbox 360, where online play on Xbox Live broke a record for 3.3 million concurrent players. It’s worth noting that the servers withheld this huge influx of players with no issues.

This marks the third consecutive year that the Call of Duty franchise has set day one launch records across all forms of entertainment, something no other entertainment franchise in any medium has ever accomplished. Last year, in North America and the United Kingdom, Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops had estimated day-one sell-through of $360 million and in 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, set day-one records with estimated sell through of $310 million, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.