Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Was 2015's Best-Selling Game as Franchise Passes 250 Million Units

Activision's Call of Duty series has once again topped the sales charts, with the publisher claiming the latest iteration, Black Ops III, was the best-selling game in 2015 worldwide.

According to the publisher, it was 2015's top seller "by a wide margin in both units and dollars sold through." In North America, Call of Duty was the best-selling franchise for the seventh year in a row, according to NPD data released today. The franchise has now topped the 250 million units sold mark. This is the first update on lifetime sales for the series since November 2014, prior to the release of Advanced Warfare (and Black Ops III).

"This achievement is thanks to the amazing experiences created by all of our development teams, and would not be possible without the incredible passion from the Call of Duty community," Rob Kostich, Activison's president and general manager of the Call of Duty franchise, said in a statement shared with GameSpot. "We congratulate Treyarch on creating an incredibly engaging and an enormously fun game with Black Ops III and look forward to what's to come in 2016."

Black Ops III was released on November 6 for PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. It introduced some new, Titanfall-esque movement mechanics, such as wallrunning, to the series. It also featured a four-player cooperative campaign with a progression system and a Zombies mode built around larger, more in-depth maps. You can read GameSpot's review here.

Black Ops III was among the three best-selling games on Amazon during the holiday season, along with Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront. (It didn't specify which was number one.) It's also had a strong start to 2016 at retail in the UK. The NPD Group's list of best-selling game was topped last year by Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, with Grand Theft Auto V beating out Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013. Keep in mind, however, that NPD data only tracks new, physical sales at retail in the US.