Modern Warfare 2 sales: gets 2.4 million orders in US, 1 million sold on day 1 in UK. The love for game made fans line up hours in advance of the release of Activision Blizzard Inc's much-talked about "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" video game on Tuesday.
The first-person shooter game, which generated a lot of interest among hard-core fans, is set to break all previous records in sale.
Experts have predicted it to be one of the biggest and fastest-selling titles in history. It has become so popular that people think it will easily overcome records set by blockbuster releases from the "Grand Theft Auto" series.
All this record is being set at a time when the video game industry revenue in the United States, the world's largest market, is down 13 percent this year, according to industry tracker NPD.
To make sure that the stuff sets record, Activision partnered with retailers including GameStop Corp and Best Buy Co for more than 10,000 midnight store openings in North America.
And its popularity could be measured from one incident. Around 89 young people lined up Monday night for some two hours at the GameStop store near Union Square in New York City to make sure that become first to buy the game.
"This is the only game I'm probably going to do this for," said Paola Altamirano, 21. She was waiting for the moment when she could play Call of Duty with another friend online.