Call of Duty conquers another record

“Call of Duty: Black Ops” continues to devastate entertainment industry records.

Activision today announced the latest installment in its multibillion dollar franchise has generated sales of $650 million in its first five days on shelves – an 18 percent (and $100 million) improvement over last year’s “Modern  Warfare 2”. That makes the game the highest opening entertainment property – of any sort – in history.

“Black Ops” recently broke the opening day records as well, with $360 million in sales in its first 24 hours.

Beyond shattering sales records, the game is also setting new high marks on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game consoles. By the end of Nov. 9 – the game’s launch day – more than 2.6 million players had played “Black Ops”. And cumulatively they had logged more than 5.9 million hours in the multiplayer portion of the game.

The performance is a vindication for Activision and developer Treyarch, as many gamers and industry observers were doubtful earlier this year that the company would be able to match the quality or sales of “Modern Warfare 2”.

With that question definitively answered, all that remains now is will “Black Ops” beat its predecessor? Activision, publicly, is saying it doesn’t expect that to happen – but the consensus from industry observers is that’s the company taking its normal conservative stance, to keep investor expectations in-line.