“‘Call of Duty’ breaks $3 billion sales mark”

Check this out from THR:

Activision Blizzard Inc. said its “Call of Duty” video game franchise has pushed past the $3 billion mark in global retail sales.

Overall, the “Call of Duty” series has sold more than 55 million units since its launch in 2003, Activision said Friday, citing data compiled by NPD Group, Charttrack, GfK and internal company estimates.

Just to put things in perspective, the #1 movie per domestic and international B.O. this year is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which has grossed $833M. Um, that would be $2.2B less than the gross total for “Call of Duty” — and the videogame has only been available to the public for less than a month! Which provides the frame for this dude’s comment from the THR article:

“If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing ‘Call of Duty’ games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history,” Activision chief executive Bobby Kotick said.

And there you go: “entertainment experiences.” Does that description get at a major distinction between movies and videogames? Movies are simply “entertainment”; videogames are “entertainment experiences.” That instead of entering into a story passively through the Protagonist (movie), the viewer becomes a user by entering into a story actively through a videogame Protagonist (e.g., 1st person shooter).

UPDATE: I stand corrected by my savvy readers. $5B for the entire COD series, not just this one vid-release.

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