Activision Touts ‘Sell-Through’ Success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Credit: Activision

Activision Blizzard announced this week that the latest iteration of Call of Duty is finding success in the first three days of its release. The newest version of the popular first-person shooter franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, has generated more than $800M USD worldwide in “sell-through” since its release Oct. 28 on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms, according to internal Activision data.

It should be noted that “sell through” and “sales” at retail are two different things: inventory sell-through rates measure “the amount of inventory a retailer sells in relation to the amount they purchased from a manufacturer,” notes this article from Lightspeed, explaining what this metric means.

Activision also claimed in its announcement that Modern Warfare II also set a new franchise opening weekend record as “the #1 top-selling Call of Duty digital opening” in franchise history, and “topped the previous five-day franchise record, set in 2011 by Modern Warfare 3 ($775M) in sell-through, to become the biggest opening ever in Call of Duty.” The company also claimed that the new game set “new player participation franchise records for number of unique players and hours played through its first three days of premium release,” but did not provide additional data to prove this.