Black Ops sales top $1 billion

Call of Duty: Black Ops has now netted more than $1 billion in sales since its November launch, publisher Activision has confirmed.

That makes it the fastest grossing videogame of all time, according to CEO Bobby Kotick.

"In all of entertainment, only Call of Duty and Avatar have ever achieved the billion dollar revenue milestone this quickly," he claimed.

As we found out last month, $650 million of that total came in the game's first five days on sale.

"Call of Duty continues to rewrite not just the record books, but also the rules of interactive entertainment," insisted Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing.

"Even more remarkable than the number of units sold is the number of hours people are playing the game together online which are unprecedented. Call of Duty is more than a game, it's a true community."

Activision claims that 600 million hours have now been logged playing the Treyarch-developed shooter.

According to Microsoft stats, the average Xbox 360 player logs on more than once a day and plays for more than one hour each time. Over half of all game time is spent playing online with and against friends.

Black Ops won a very respectable 8/10 from Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell earlier this year, but that's not the reason it's done so well. No, according to Kotick, it's all down to you guys.

"This extraordinary milestone was achieved because of the tens of millions of passionate Call of Duty players around the world," he insisted. "Global audiences have logged billions of hours online with Call of Duty games on Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and on personal computers.

"This unique level of community engagement has enabled Call of Duty to become one of the world's most engaged online communities."