Activision Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced recently that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crossed the $1 billion mark in sales since its launch on November 8, 2011, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.

Highlighting the trend of interactive entertainment gaining a greater hold of audiences worldwide, the game achieved this milestone in just 16 days, eclipsing the record set in 2009 by the feature film “Avatar,” which reached the $1 billion milestone in 17 days.

While 2011 box office revenue is on the decline – down 4 percent this year at $9.4 billion, compared with $9.8 billion in 2010 — the number of people purchasing and participating in gaming is on the rise, with no sign of slowing_. With more than 30 million gamers, the Call of Duty community now exceeds the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid.

“Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. ”Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.”

Call of Duty is now amongst that rarified group of sustained franchises like “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Rings” and the National Football League (NFL) that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release.

Our Call of Duty Elite is one of the fastest growing online services ever with more than six million players registered since its launch November 8, 2011 and over one million premium subscriptions sold to date. By comparison, the premium subscription services of Netflix, Hulu Plus, Sirius XM and Xbox LIVE, did not reach one million paid subscribers until almost one year after launch.

“Call of Duty has become that rare entertainment franchise that transcends its own genre. Core gamers love it, as our stellar reviews show. But every year, new people are drawn into Call of Duty,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. ”And while the franchise continues to set records, our fans still seem to want more, demonstrated by our record setting start on Call of Duty Elite.

We are committed to helping everyone connect, compete and improve their game, Call of Duty style.”

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As First-Person Shooters go, this monster of a game is the king of the hill. There are few competitors who can match this level of focused development on a game with so many gameplay options. Infinity Ward has a long history for developing Call of Duty games, each iteration getting bigger and better as the years progress.

Players from Modern Warfare 2 will recognize the feel and gameplay mechanics of Modern Warfare 3; there is something that is unique to the Modern Warfare series that competitors can’t quite duplicate. What this creates is a game that is at once familiar and yet also features new elements for players to experience.

With Modern Warfare 3, the storyline is straight and to the point. Some fans commented in Modern Warfare 2 that the plot was just a touch past the point of confused head scratching, and so that has been tweaked to a degree, focusing more on the seamlessness between missions with noticeable highs intermixed with low points of the campaign. You won’t be bored here.

The visuals of the game are more streamlined and that really appears to be the name of the game this time. Previous Modern Warfare games have felt rushed or chaotic, and while there is no shortage of either in this game, the visuals certainly draw you into the game world. Developers have focused more on realism and less on quick and fast gameplay.

The campaign itself is indeed more fluid, with events planned out to prevent any and all confusion from setting into the players’ minds. You have options in weapons and in gameplay direction, but the flow is overall more cognizant of the players’ choices. You won’t have to worry about ammo or weapons, as there will be plenty of them to be found in the environment.

The Survival mode in Spec Ops is particularly organic, mixing different types of enemies after each successive wave of opponents that are trying to batter you down. Warning, the helicopter will make you cower in fear, if you make it to a good hiding spot at all. Here you’ll either play smart or die fast, and the player must choose their reloads.

Do you want more grenades or more ammo? You won’t have time to get both. This mode puts to shame any comparisons to Zombie Mode from Call of Duty: Black Ops; it’s just leagues apart.

The real draw for most players of Modern Warfare 3 will be the online multiplayer. Beyond the campaign and the reasonably predictable AI, the need to play against a living breathing person is the real advantage of the game. With new weapons and map packs likely to come online, players can expect to have a very customized multiplayer journey.

Experience points are gained for every kill and are also gained for every flag or dog tag collected in new multiplayer modes. The Kill Confirmed mode is one of the new modes available that should lead to a lot of creative strategies to avoid walking into an ambush. This mode will require the player to retrieve the dog tags from opponents that they’ve eliminated.

It means that, yes, you can be fast with a gun, but now you’ll also have to be strategic and not babysit the high ground with a big gun. Happily, all is not lost as you can actually deny the opposing team their points by picking up your teammates’ dog tags before they do. The Team Defender mode is a hybrid combination of Capture the Flag and King of the Hill.

The team that keeps the flag for the longest amount of time will accumulate the most amount of points as most would expect, except that the flag is mobile the entire match and it’s a race to see who can hide or run the furthest without dying. Flag generation will likely lead to no shortage of online trash talking since the first player to be killed is the one who generates the one flag for the whole match.

This should lead to some otherwise hilarious kill footage. The snag in an otherwise seamless game begins in a familiar area that fans are all too frustrated with experiencing. The re-spawning part of the online multiplayer is again an issue that Infinity Ward seems unwilling to address. Players just don’t like getting killed immediately after re-spawning; it just isn’t exciting.

The interactive button press cut scenes in campaign can be an annoyance on the second or third round of play through but are otherwise fine. Modern Warfare 3 is an excellent addition to the Call of Duty series. Its crisp visuals, combined with the better plotted storyline and continually evolving gameplay, make for an exceptionally focused game.

Players will be able to tell, versus Modern Warfare 2′s scattered jumble, that this iteration of Modern Warfare felt like it was developed along a very specific set of guidelines. As a result, the replay value on this game is particularly high, so it is unlikely that there will be many used copies available in the immediate future.

The overall game retains that great First-Person Shooter feel from past versions, and the new multiplayer options create an even greater range of death and destruction than ever before. This is a solid game that for any shooting fan is a must have for their collection.
Image Courtesy of   http://www.callofduty.com

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