Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Bobby Kotick

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Surpasses $1 Billion In 16 Days

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:29:26 +0000

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) has achieved a very impressive milestone. Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit $1 billion in sales in about 16 days. As a comparison, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took 60 days to hit the same milestone.

For those of you that have heard of a movie called Avatar, you will be interested to know that the movie took 17 days to hit $1 billion in sales. That is right, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 made money faster than Avatar did.

“Modern Warfare 3, and other games by us, have a much broader appeal than they have had in the past, with the social nature of the game offering a different type of interactive experience that has not existed before,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick in an interview with The New York Times. “As the number of new game consoles has expanded, along with the audience, it’s capturing a new audience that in the past has not considered playing video games.”

Modern Warfare 3 is the company’s 9th game in the Call of Duty series. The series initially launched in 2003. Kotick believes the reason why the series is doing so well is because the video game creators continue to focus on telling a better storyline.

[NYT]

Call of Duty: Black Ops Passes $1 Billion In Sales

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:33:22 +0000

Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops has passed $1 billion in sales. This is faster than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Black Ops sold $650 million in the first 5 days since it released worldwide on November 9th.

“In all of entertainment, only Call of Duty and “Avatar” have ever achieved the billion dollar revenue milestone this quickly,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. “This is a tribute to the global appeal of the Call of Duty franchise, the exceptional talent at Treyarch and the hundreds of extraordinary people across our many Call of Duty studios including Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer that work tirelessly on the franchise. Our ability to provide the most compelling, immersive entertainment experience, and enhance it with regular, recurring content that delivers hundreds of hours of audience value, has allowed Call of Duty to continue to set sales and usage records.”

[Kotaku]

Call of Duty: Black Ops Breaks Sales Record With $360 Million In One Day

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:32:56 +0000

Activision has announced that they have a new “biggest entertainment launch in history” record through the sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Activision estimates that they made $360 million on the opening day of the game sales in the U.K. and North America. About 5.6 million copies of the game were sold on the first day.

Call of Duty: Black Ops succeeds Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which had the previous “biggest entertainment launch in history.” That game brought in $310 million on launch day and sold 4.7 million copies.

“There has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening day records for two consecutive years and we are on track to outperform last year’s five-day global sales record of $550 million,” stated Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.

[USA Today]

Modern Warfare Costed $40-$50 Million To Make

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:24:05 +0000

When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released, the game made $310 million in 24 hours and $600 million in 5 days. The first question that might be on a financial analyst’s minds may be, “how much of that was profit?” It turns out that the game costed roughly $40-$50 million to produce. For a video game this is a massive budget. But it took only 2 years for Activision to put together. Gran Turismo 5 took about 5 years and costed about $60 million to put together so far as a comparison.

The launch budget of the game was about $200 million which is about the same cost as a summer movie. That $200 million included producing, distributing, and marketing. “My goal was to create a launch that would compare very favorably to the biggest box offices of all time,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with the L.A. Times. It looks like Kotick met his goal based on the sales the game made thus far.

Former Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig Joins Activision To Head Up Guitar Hero

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:17:04 +0000

Dan Rosensweig is the former COO of Yahoo! Inc. and former President of CNET. Now Rosensweig is getting into gaming by joining Activision Blizzard Inc. to head up the Guitar Hero franchise. Rosensweig quit Yahoo! in 2006 after working there for five years in product development and marketing. Rosensweig left around the same time Terry Semel did.

Coincidentally Activision’s current CEO Bobby Kotick served on the Yahoo! board of directors up until last year. When Rosensweig left Yahoo!, he worked at Quadrangle Group. Quadrangle is a private equity firm based out of New York. Rosensweig was the Silicon Valley representation of the firm.

Rosensweig’s responsibilities at Activision will be to maintain the whole Guitar Hero franchise. The franchise was put together by Activision’s Red Octane unit and Neversoft studios. Guitar Hero has had three blockbuster games in the franchise, but some analysts believe that the growth for music games may be slowing down. Rosenweig needs to make sure Guitar Hero does not become obsolete.

“With a platform and content that universally engages a wide range of audiences, Guitar Hero has incredible growth potential,” stated Rosensweig. “I look forward to continuing to develop Guitar Hero into an even more successful enterprise.”

[via LAT]