Call of Duty: Modern Warfare turns over $600 million in 3 days

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has become the fastest-selling title in the franchise for this generation, grossing $600 million in the first three days on sale.

The Call of Duty entry for each year is usually the catalyst for a boost in share price for Activision Blizzard. Shareholders will be pleased since the company’s share price still hasn’t recovered from the two-year low it experienced in February 2019.

The previous entry in the franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, grossed by $100 million less than Modern Warfare has in the same period. It has also been reported that Modern Warfare is the top-selling new release for 2019, as well as the top-selling digital entry for Activision Blizzard in company history.

In addition, Modern Warfare set a new record for the highest digital pre-orders on the PlayStation Network and for digital sales in the first three days. The game has also become the top-selling release for PC in franchise history.

While the game has performed phenomenally well in terms of sales, its reception has been hijacked by a controversy surrounding a particular mission. The mission in question, Highway of Death, blames Russian soldiers for a war crime in the game’s fictional story, which bears quite a lot of resemblance to a real-world war crime committed by US forces.

As such, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been branded as ‘US propaganda’ in Russia, and is being review bombed on Metacritic, causing the user score to drop to 3.4. Some reviews have taken into account this controversy as part of their reviews, but all have claimed that the mission is in poor taste.

Overall, Modern Warfare has been met with praise for the way it reinvents the Call of Duty campaign, and brings the multiplayer gameplay back down to Earth from the futuristic Black Ops titles. However, Spec Ops mode has been heavily criticized as a throwaway mode that most players don’t jump into more than once or twice. The game mode boasted huge open missions for players to work together within as they complete objectives and take down enemies, but in reality the vast spaces are fairly empty, leaving a lot to be desired.