Black Ops To Outsell Halo: Reach and Killzone 3

Modern Warfare 2 broke sales records last year and it looks like Black Ops might be doing the same. According to GameStop, the game is already tracking ahead of Modern Warfare 2's pre-orders: "GameStop is tracking to all-time, record reservations on Call of Duty: Black Ops. We are ahead of where we were with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year, which previously set the industry standard." Modern Warfare 2 had nearly 3 million pre-orders when the game shipped last year. Activision is already investing more money into Black Ops than any other game, so it shouldn't have any problem with the competition this fall and early next year.

According to VGChartz, Halo: Reach sold approximately 4 million copies during its first week, which is about 1 million short of what Modern Warfare 2 did in one day on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Michael Pachter and other market analysts are expecting Black Ops to do almost as good as Modern Warfare 2, thus beating Halo: Reach which is limited to just the Xbox 360 user base. Pachter: "Because it will be multiplatform, Black Ops will outsell Halo Reach. Activision appears to agree with me, and the marketing campaign for Black Ops should be even bigger than the Halo marketing campaign." Although highly praised, last years Killzone 2 failed to meet expectations and has sold only a little over 2 million copies worldwide to date. Killzone 3 won't be released until February 2011, but analysts are already predicting it to sell more than its predecessor and perhaps reaching 3 million units by the end of 2011. That would be about 1/7th of what Modern Warfare 2 did in less than one year and the amount of pre-orders Black Ops is predicted to have accumulated by early next month.

With the lack of major competition during Christmas and already high pre-sales, Black Ops will be one of the most played FPS games on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. If you still haven't pre-ordered Black Ops, do so now to reserve your copy and make sure you'll be playing the game on 9th of November.