Modern Warfare 3 Smashes Single-Day Sales Record

The year's biggest video game release made more money in one day than the nation of Tonga makes in a year.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sold an astounding $400 million worth of copies in its first day, leading the game's developers to herald it as the "biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium." The first-day sales of the first-person shooter surpass the previous record holder, Call of Duty: Black Ops which sold a piddling $360 million in its first day last year. Black Ops, in turn, supplanted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which had sold a pathetic $310 million. All told, those three games amounts to $1.07 billion for Activision, the company that produces the Call of Duty series in just three days. Maybe this "video game" thing isn't such a fad after all.