‘Black Ops’ hits $1 billion in sales

Activision’s “Call of Duty” machine is showing no signs of weakness.

“Call of Duty: Black Ops” has hit $1 billion in sales in just six weeks, the company announced today. And the user engagement numbers are somehow even more impressive.

Since its Nov. 9 launch, players have spent more than 600 million hours with the game. That’s the equivalent of more than 68,000 years. Microsoft statistics show the average player logs on more than once a day and plays for more than one hour each time.

“There are more peak concurrent players on ‘Call of Duty’ than there are people reading any newspaper in America,” says Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision-Blizzard. “Look at the number of people watching Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon and combine them. You still have more people playing ‘Call of Duty’ now.”

Like its predecessor, “Black Ops” came out of the gate strong. In its first five days on shelves, the game had sales of $650 million. It hit the $1 billion mark nearly a month quicker than “Modern Warfare 2” though, and now stands poised to assume the crown of the top grossing videogame of all time.

Kotick notes that no announcements have been made about “Black Ops” DLC, but hinted that we’ll see more than just the two map packs that suppored “Modern Warfare 2”.

“I think you can expect we’ll have more content available,” he says.