The latest release of Call of Duty has made $1 billion dollars, and ascended to some new form of digital Godhood. All hail Bobby Kotick!
Call of Duty is now amongst that rarified group of sustained franchises like "Star Wars", "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release.
Yes, it's official. Having now made a pile of money so large that smaller piles of money are now orbitting it in a display of Newtonian physics gone mad, Call of Duty is now the gaming generation's Lord of the Rings. Makarov is Sauron, Captain Price is our new Aragorn, and cats and dogs are living together in an inversion of all that is good and right in the world.
That's Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick's take on success of Modern Warfare 3. The game has in fact taken only 16 days to make $1 billion, which is a whole day faster than the cinematic great that is Avatar.
In fact, today's breathless release points out that cinema box-office revenue is only $9.4 billion this past year. It's a frightening and godless mathematical exercise to compare just how much more successful Call of Duty is than, well, just about any movie you care to name.
But Kotick is not content to sit idle and merely destroy a century of cinema and the life's work of JRR Tolkien. "Engagement of our Call of Duty brand continues to rise around the world," he cried from his banner bedecked lair hidden in an active volcano somewhere in the Pacific. "Call of Duty ... has made an indelible mark on pop culture," he added, addressing an adoring crowd of gamers and low-end celebrities.
"Every year, new people are drawn into Call of Duty," added Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, and indeed, CoD is not unlike a hungry, beastial maw.
When, we wonder, will the madness end?
Oh well, at least all those CoD players aren't clogging up Battlefield 3 servers.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012