Call of Duty now a $3 billion franchise

by Justin McElroy on Nov 27th 2009 10:15AM

Activision announced this morning that, according to data garnered from the NPD, ChartTrack, GfK and internal estimates, the Call of Duty franchise has accumulated $3 billion-with-a-b in sales over its lifetime. As all but the densest among you have likely deduced, CoD was put over the top by the release of Modern Warfare 2, which moved $550 million in its first five days on sale.

For a bit of perspective, $3 billion is pretty darn close to the gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Swaziland, a comparison that's especially appropriate when you realize that 54 percent of Swazis have a Gamerscore over 20,000. ... Oh, wait, this doesn't say "a Gamerscore over 20,000," it says "access to clean water." Sorry, smudge on the page.

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Tags: activision, call-of-duty, call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2, DS, infinity-ward, Microsoft, modern-warfare-2, Nintendo, treyarch, Wii, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (73)

I remember that stage, it was pretty awesome.
Not as awesome as owning a $3 billion franchise though.

Grats to the series.
Glad I contributed >_>

"Oh, wait, this doesn't say "a Gamerscore over 20,000," it says "access to clean water." Sorry, smudge on the page."

That comment is clever, you appear to care about people not having access to clean water when not really doing anything about it yourself, bravo.

Justin, that was neither clever or funny.

You only succeeded in making yourself look a bit of a douche.

Wow, you people are way too sensitive.

and what are you doing about it?

It's not an issue of being sensitive, it's an issue of being appropriate. It wasn't clever, funny or necessary. However, this is Joystiq and I've come to expect nothing less. I'm sure the people over there who are dying because of a lack of said water think Justin is just a riot. Some fat white kid on the other side of the planet with jokes to spare.

Hilarious isn't it.

Thought the exact same thing. What a dick move.

Yeah I don't even care about the people having no water the joke was just downright rubbish.

Im not that sensitive.

I can (and regularly do) laugh at jokes based on peoples
races, ages, sex, sexual orientation, financial status, nationality etc

But the thing is, those jokes are funny.

That referrence was poorly thought out, out of place and
lacking in any humour.

Why don't we all stop gaming, and living our privileged lives to go help the world!

This blog is owned by AOL isn't it? How much do they do to help the world?

Go plant a tree hippies.

Sometimes your sarcastic remarks at the ends of blog posts can go too far. This one was completely unnecessary. Especially taking place on the day that Americans go out and waste a bunch on money on gifts for "Jesus' birthday."

Yeah, I thought it was funny as well as slightly sad.

And anyone who claimed to be offended - what percentage of your income do you donate to charities, including those that might offer assistance to (for example) those people without access to clean water, like helping them build wells or something? Or do you make clear to the politicians looking for your vote that it's important to you that they do something about it? Because those of you who haven't done either of those things - fuck the fuck off with your 'offended'. *You're* offending *me*.

The only thing that could make that joke more confusing is if Joystiq said "a gamerscore of over 9000" instead of 20,000.

I don't understand the reason for that last comparison. Are you trying to make people feel bad for buying Call of Duty games and not donating money to Swaziland?

I read it as a joke/sad fact of life relevant to comparing COD's sales to their GDP. If you feel guilty about that it may be your own conscience telling you something.

Zoidberg: *holds up a 300 dollar bill* One franchise please!

Ma: phht! How much is that franchise really worth?

Random guy: $3 billion, ma'am.

Ma: Now THAT'S walking around money!

Some people might be offended by that last bit, some people might be confused, but I laughed.

I'm sure (hoping) it was done for light-hearted humor without trying to be a downer or a mean person.

Either way, I laughed. Reminds me of T-Shirt Hell.

Same here, if you can live with any type of humor, make it as offensive as possible. If you didn't at least chuckle, you need to get a sense of humor.

If the requirement for having a sense of humor is that I "chuckle" at depravity than count me out. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't a prerequisite to be an asshole to have a sense of humor. You can have a great sense of humor without being denigrating.

Perhaps one of the problems with the world is that it's considered fine or necessary to laugh at such things. There is plenty to find hilarity in without it having to be at the suffering of others.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that humor doesn't have to be anything to be funny, least of all offensive. You're right that there are other far more appropriate types of humor out there.

I do however think that if done in a light-hearted nature without ill intent, then humor at the expense of another can be funny. I laugh at comedic portrayals of Hitler on Family Guy or on certain shirts, or the whole "because he got the gas bill" joke.

Now, if someone were going around just saying, "isn't it so awesome how these kids are dying of thirst," or anything similar, I'd find it offensive.

I don't think Justin was doing it just to be mean spirited however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaziland

If you can't laugh at what was very obviously a joke when jokes are meant to be at others expense you clearly do lack a sense of humor. You might think it's tasteless but comedy is still comedy, comedians make far worse jokes ALL THE TIME. If you can't see past the text then that's your problem. It's also a bit disturbing that only certain jokes penetrate people sense of righteous indignation, the US and other well off countries (I assume?) are the butt of peoples jokes all the time and I'm pretty positive you don't get up in arms about them. There's no difference, a joke is a joke, jokes are meant to be PC and sometimes they are to bring out the righteous ass in people like the comment section in this post goes to show.

Protip: Calling Justin a douche and wallowing in your self righteousness makes you look like just as much of an d-bag.

Aren't meant to be PC, rather*

I understand the point your making sonic and I agree to an extent. I know his intent wasn't to be mean about it. I guess for me I didn't see the need to go there, it wasn't funny or clever at all.

I'm not saying people should be censored or told what to laugh at. To the contrary, there was a point in my life where that might have been funny to me, kinda like how (as you pointed out) a Hitler joke on Family Guy might have been funny. I'm not in that phase of my life anymore. I see it like this. Try explaining to someone who lived through that, be it a Hitler joke or one like this one, try explaining to them why that's funny. You can't and it's not. However, I'm no prude. To each his own.

@LiquidPrimus: So no one can be offended or disagree with something you think is ok? I personally thought it was in bad taste, but I also understood it was a joke. But just because I understood that it was a joke doesn't all of a sudden make it ok. Maybe think about a situation before you post on the interwebs, sir. You're clearly doing it wrong.

Oh, and using "Protip" makes you a 'd-bag' as you so eloquently put it.

Liquid the only thing your positive about are your own assumptions. Living in a wealthy country doesn't mean that one has to relish or put down or make fun of those who are less fortunate. Yeah I'm an American, but that doesn't mean we all get together and laugh at the expense of the poor. Some of us actually try and do something about it.

We all know comedians say far worse, that's not the point. It sounds like the argument a child would make to justify their position, "He did it first!" or "Hers is worse!". It's not about having righteous indignation either, it's about making a choice. In this case I chose (and so did a few others) to say something about this joke and we have a right to do that. Just as much as you have a right to defend it. I don't have to be uptight or self righteous to do that no more than you have to be childish and easily entertained to find it funny.

Oh I know, it's impossible to explain to the victim how it's funny. I wouldn't try it around a holocaust victim, and I certainly wouldn't try it here.

A friend's parent asked me not to wear a shirt I had with a Hitler joke on it because an important person they were meeting was bringing his daughter, who was part Jewish if I remember right.

I instead wore a shirt that said "I fucking love to cuddle". Turns out the guy got a good laugh out of it, and asked me if it's worked on anyone yet.

As you said though, to each their own.

saying "Protip" DOES makes you a 'd-bag. Might as well tape up your glasses and grab an inhaler.

Considering all of the snarky comments the authors on this website usually make about un-classy marketing, etc., that last "joke" was pretty ill advised.

Keep it classy guys.

I bet Kotick is forcing everyone to give him high-fives every morning even though he has nothing to do with the Call of Duty franchise's sucess.

No no no , you're doing it wrong:

OPP

I bet Kotick is making everyone give him high-fives every morning, even though he has absolutely nothing to do with the sucess of the Call of Duty franchise.

Too bad, they could have made more. I didn't buy the last one, as well as quite a few of my friends. We still play COD4:MW instead.

I've noticed that a few of you have been offended by my last graph, I thought I'd try to explain it a little bit, as it really did come from a very honest place.

I was looking up GDPs, trying to find a nation that was close to CoD when I found Swaziland. I actually ended up reading the whole wikipedia page, and found myself wondering if, at this, the very inception of the holiday buying season, I could provide actual perspective to our readers, instead of just communicating how much $3 billion dollars was.

I did in in the usual irreverent Joystiq tone, but if you really read it closely, I hope you can see that I'm not making fun of Swaziland. That'd be mean even for me.

We forgive you Justin, or at least I do anyway :P

You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

+1 for explaining yourself though.

No need to apologize, it is what it is. We know you didn't mean anything by it. Some of us where just speaking or peace. Thanks for explaining however.

+1 as well

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Call of Duty now a $3 billion franchise

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Posted: Nov 27th 2009 10:21AM vmenge said

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