Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Earns Half a Billion in Three Days

It’s been a good week for Video Games. Or, a bad week, if you’re poor or limited to one console. This was the week that brought us Starcraft: Legacy of the Void, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, and even the pre-season changes to League of Legends. All gigantic games in their own right, worthy of a ‘sick week’ from your school or place of work, but there was one title that came out this week that beat em’ all to the punch: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.

As the latest in the immensely popular Call of Duty franchise, no one is surprised it’s doing well--that’s just par for the course, birds sing, fish swim, Call of Duty games make money--but you might be surprised to hear about HOW well it's doing, considering the immense competition it’s currently facing from all corners of the gaming world. I mean, with such a prestigious line-up of competitors, surely Black Ops must have done at least a little worse, right?

Wrong. Activision recently started bragging about the success of Black Ops 3, and I have to say, the numbers are staggering--in the three days since it’s been out, it’s amassed over 550 million USD in global revenue. Considering it’s not atypical for a game like this to cost +50 million to develop in the first place… it’s gotten quite a lot of cash in three days. So much, in fact, Activision is calling it "bigger than any [other] game, any movie, or any entertainment launch this year."

Now, that is certainly impressive. Not to take anything away from Activision, though, it’s worth noting that Black Ops 2 made 500 million in less than 24 hours, so yes--there are signs of the behemoth of FPS’s slowing down, but really, it’s still making half a billion in less than a week, and that’s more than you or I will ever accomplish.

Now all they need to do is repeat that feat about eleven more and they’ll have paid off their purchase of King.