UK Chart: Black Ops smashes sales records
New Call of Duty shifts 2 million units, outdoing Modern Warfare 2 and making last week the biggest ever for UK game sales.
Initial sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops have broken records, with the game landing an easy number one in the UK chart after release on November 9.
Two million copies of the game were sold in five days, beating the previous record holder, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, by 13 percent. Black Ops sales generated an estimated £81.9m in that time, grossing more than the entire UK entertainment software market in the preceding two weeks. Of the 2 million copies of Black Ops sold, 55 percent were Xbox 360 versions, and 42 percent were for the PlayStation 3.
Due largely to Black Ops' record-breaking launch, last week was also the biggest grossing ever for game sales in the UK, generating £113.8m--72 percent of which was down to the latest Call of Duty. The next biggest week was in late 2008, to the tune of £107.6m. Though Black Ops has outdone last year's Call of Duty game in early sales figures, prior to launch analysts were predicting total sales would eventually amount to around 18 million units, just shy of Modern Warfare 2's 20 million sales to date.
Microsoft's camera-based Kinect system arrived in the shadow of Call of Duty: Black Ops, but did claim the only other new entry in the top 10; flagship title Kinect Sports debuted at number four. Seven out of the 11 other Kinect launch titles scored places in the UK top 40.
Michael Rawlinson, director general of trade body UKIE, submitted the success of Black Ops, as well as the launch of the Kinect and the popularity of casual games, as evidence for how ubiquitous games have become: "The positive sales figures of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, new hardware launches like Kinect, the emergence of casual/mobile games…and social networking games such as Farmville show that video games and other forms of interactive entertainment continue to be played by more people than ever--with 1 in 3 people in the UK now being gamers."
Top 10 Entertainment Software (All Prices), Week Ending November 13, 2010
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision)
2. FIFA 11 (EA Sports)
3. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft)
4. Kinect Sports (Microsoft)
5. Football Manager 2011 (SEGA)
6. Professor Layton and the Lost Future (Nintendo)
7. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks)
8. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo)
9. The Sims 3 (EA Games)
10. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (LucasArts)
Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track (C)2010 ELSPA Ltd for the week ending November 13, 2010.
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