Call of Duty: MW3 Beats Avatar to $1B

Plus, it hasn't caused anybody to dress up in blue body paint.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has generated more than $1 billion in sales, breaking the record held by the film Avatar for how fast a work of entertainment surpassed that threshold. The first-person shooter game eclipsed the $1-billion mark in just 16 days – one day shorter than it took for the 3D environmental action flick to hit that mark back in 2009. Some 30 million people around the world are now playing CoD:MW3, and with each copy retailing for about $60, that means the game is well on its way to setting a record for the $2 billion mark, too. Activision, the company that produces the Call of Duty series, says that the games are now in the same company as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the NFL as franchises "that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release," even if EA's Battlefield 3 is the superior game.