“Call of Duty” Kills Opening-Day Records, Extends Activision’s Brand Equity

Apparently more people are interested in military combat and espionage than jacking cars and shooting mobsters. Activision announced that its “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” video game set an opening-day sales record on Tuesday, moving 4.7 million units and trouncing the previous mark by Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto IV,” which sold a mere 3.7 million copies in April 2008.

Cnet’s Daniel Terdiman begrudging applauds the new record while assuming that it’ll be broken by the next hot game – possibly Super Mario Brothers Wii, which goes on sale Sunday – but we see a success story for a brand that was founded before many of today’s gamers could properly hold a joystick.Continue reading...