Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Just Set A New Sales Record

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War officially released on Friday the 13th, but the game was not cursed--far from it. Activision Blizzard announced on Sunday that the game has set a new global franchise sales record for most digital units sold on launch day.

"Friday's release of Black Ops Cold War set a new record as the highest first day digital sales worldwide in franchise history. Thank you to Call of Duty players everywhere," Activision. Blizzard executive Anna Malmhake said in a statement.

"Launch is just the start This new title is releasing into the largest and most engaged Call of Duty community ever. We look forward to delivering an incredible amount of free post launch content, events and support for the entire community as Black Ops Cold War evolves just as we did last year following the release of Modern Warfare," the executive added.

Activision did not provide any further context surrounding Cold War's day-one sales, and it's not immediately clear which title Cold War overtook to set the new record. Like many other publishers, Activision shies away from releasing cold hard data in favor of more general statements regarding a game's performance.

A strong start for Cold War was expected, given the game is predicted to be the best-selling title of 2020 in the US. The Black Ops sub-brand historically performs very well, and these results speak to that trend continuing.

Cold War launched into a new environment for the Call of Duty series, as Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone continue to be immensely popular with their own dedicated playerbases. As such, industry-watchers were closely watching the initial sales results for Cold War, which we now know to be very strong.

Given the ongoing popularity of Modern Warfare and Warzone, Activision has adopted a unique strategy where XP and levelling is "synchronized" across all three games.

GameSpot's Black Ops Cold War review in progress has scored the game an 8/10. Keep checking back with GameSpot for our full review and further coverage.