Publishing giant Activision has revealed that this year's Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII has been the biggest Day One digital sales event in its history.
That's according to a post on the company's website, in which the firm claims that the new release broke the digital franchise record set by 2017's WWII. In addition, Acti claims that PC sales doubled year-on-year.
This is the first time that Activision has released its Call of Duty franchise via the Battle.net platform. In addition, the game broke digital records on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
That digital sales are rising is not particularly surprising or, indeed, newsworthy. As digital becomes a larger and larger part of the games sector, sales on this are going to increase. Indeed, physical sales have also declined massively for the game, at least in the UK. It's entirely likely that people who previously bought boxed copies are now going for digital versions of their favourite shooter.
As for why sales doubled on PC - the beta will certainly have driven hype, and the game launching on Battle.net is a sign of commitment to the platform. PCGamesInsider.biz has written previously about how Black Ops IIII could be the No.1 player in the PC battle royale space before long.
In general, without knowing how many copies of WWII were sold during the time period last year, we actually have no idea how well Black Ops IIII has sold.
All of which is to say that this announcement hasn't got much to say, other than 'game was released, has sold some copies digitally'.
And now back to the PR drivel.
“Black Ops 4 is an incredible game, and the community’s response to it has been amazing," said COD EVP and GM Rob Kostich.
"We have shattered multiple digital day one sales records, and the number of people who connected online on day one to play has grown year on year. But probably the most important thing is that the community is having so much fun across Multiplayer, Zombies and Blackout. We are so incredibly thankful for the community’s trust and support. This is just the beginning, it’s going to be an incredible journey with Black Ops 4.”
