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The entertainment industry has a new billion-dollar baby.
Activision Blizzard announced yesterday its “Call of Duty: Black Ops” video game has racked up $1 billion in sales after just 42 days on the market.
That’s quicker than the company’s previous blockbuster video game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” which passed the 10-figure plateau in 64 days.
“In all of entertainment, only ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Avatar’ have ever achieved the billion-dollar revenue milestone this quickly,” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said.
“Avatar” — the 3-D blockbuster produced by 20th Century Fox, which, like The Post is owned by News Corp. — wears the crown as the fastest entertainment property to ring up $1 billion in sales, having done so last year after just 20 days in wide release.
Demand for “Black Ops,” the seventh release of the “Call of Duty” franchise, has proved more resilient than some Wall Street analysts expected, and puts the game in the running to become among the biggest entertainment releases in history, whether in movies, books or video games.
The milestone follows last month’s announcement that “Black Ops” — which retails for $59.99 — had generated an unprecedented $360 million in revenue on its first day of release, and $650 million during its first five days, shattering records set by previous media titles.
“More people play ‘Black Ops’ every day than watch late-night hosts Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon combined,” Kotick boasted in an interview with The Post.
Since the release of ‘Black Ops,’ users have logged more than 600 million hours of online playing time — or about 68,500 years. If parents are worried, Kotick argues that ‘Black Ops,’ which allows users to play in groups online, is a kind of “social networking tool.”
As such, Kotick argues that Activision’s business model is closer to Facebook’s or Google’s than that of a traditional video-game manufacturer.
Shares of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard, which have risen 10 percent year to date, gained 2 cents to $12.24 yesterday.