Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: The Best Selling Game Of 2012?

By Prarthito Maity | Dec 10, 2012 09:05 PM EST

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Activision’s ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’ has easily been one of the highly anticipated games of the current year. This has been, more or less, the same story with every ‘Call of Duty’ title that has been released over the years. However, where does the franchise go from here? How have the game’s sales fared?

As far as ratings are concerned, ‘Black Ops 2’ is still at number one in the UK games chart, with little change to report. This means that Activision and Treyarch’s zombie-filled first person shooter marches on to become the fourth title of 2012 to hold the top spot in the UK chart for four weeks, along with ‘Fifa 12,’ ‘Fifa 13,’ and ‘LEGO Batman 2.’

Similar is the outcome in the U.S. charts as well. The game here has also retained the number one spot ahead of ‘Halo 4’ and ‘Assassin’s Creed 3,’ dominating in the second and third positions, respectively. However, a Forbes report believes that rumors of the death of ‘Call of Duty’ are greatly exaggerated.

Earlier, according to a GamesIndustry.biz report, it was revealed that analyst Michael Patcher called the game a failure when asked about the game and its outcome.

“I know the game sells billions of dollars,” Patcher stated. “Activision did a bad thing with Call of Duty from a profit perspective. They trained gamers that you can buy a game and play it all year, ten hours a week, forever, and you never have to pay again. You just wait for the next Call of Duty. I promise you there are plenty of people, numbering in the millions, who play one game, which is Call of Duty, and they never stop.”

“That’s just like the people who play World of Warcraft and never stop, yet the World of Warcraft guys are paying $180 a year, and the Call of Duty guys are paying $60. So who’s got a better model? This multiplayer thing being free was a mistake. I don’t think anybody ever envisioned it would be this big. It’s a mistake because it keeps those people from buying and playing other games.”

Nonetheless, make no mistake about it that ‘Black Ops 2’ has actually managed to beat out ‘Halo 4’ for the top spot for U.S. retail game unit sales during the critical month of November, per market researcher NPD, although none of the titles managed to lift overall game sales high enough to beat sales for November 2011.

Sales for total video game hardware, software, and accessories sold at retail, as Venture Beat states, were $2.55 billion in November, down 11 percent from $2.87 billion a year ago.

This year’s ‘Black Ops 2’ sales were revealed by Activision earlier stating that the game’s sales rocketed to the billion-dollar mark just 15 days after its release. The sales of the game hit a billion dollars two days faster than 3-D film blockbuster ‘Avatar,’ which set a box office record after its release in 2009.

However, per an earlier Inquisitr report, Activision may be showing off unquestionably big numbers for the latest Call of Duty release, but “some analysts and investors suspect that the franchise is showing signs of beginning a downward trend.”