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The evergreen Call of Duty IP has lead Activision to a stronger than expected quarter, with both sales and revenue up year-on-year.
Sales climbed from $1.3bn to $1.4bn for the period and profits shot from $381m to $503m. Digital was the star performer, with sales climbing 30 per cent year-on-year.
The First Strike map pack for Black Ops, which was released in February, sold 1.4m units in its first 24 hours. Sales of it were 20 per cent higher than than the first DLC for Modern Warfare 2.
In total Black ops has seen in excess of 1.2bn online gameplay hours logged. In total the game has welcomed 33 per cent more gamers than Modern Warfare 2 achieved.
"Digital content continues to represent a significant portion of our revenues," CEO Bobby Kotick stated. "It increased by about $100million year over year, enabling us to deliver record first-quarter operating margins and earnings per share."
The company also spoke further about it’s new microtransaction based Call of Duty designed for the Chinese market. Little was said about Bungie’s first title for the company, though it did confirm that there will be no new Blizzard games in 2011.
