Activision claims Modern Warfare 3 is seeing record engagement levels for the trilogy

Activision has claimed that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is seeing record engagement levels compared to its predecessors.

“Thank you for a historic launch,” it said on Tuesday. “Just two weeks in, MWIII has already set records with the highest engagement in the new Modern Warfare Trilogy!”

According to the publisher, the game has seen “more hours per player overall” than 2019’s Modern Warfare and last year’s Modern Warfare 2.

It also called the game’s Zombies mode “the most engaging third mode in MW history”, and said campaign players have put in “more time per player in MWIII then the previous two instalments”.

What’s probably more telling than the game’s engagement stats is what hasn’t been announced – sales figures and revenue generated.

Activision has traditionally been quick to publish sales figures when new series entries have performed relatively strongly, although Modern Warfare 3 has tough footsteps to follow in.

Modern Warfare 2 topped $1 billion in sales in 10 days, making it the fastest-selling entry in the long-running series and the highest grossing entertainment opening of last year, according to the company.

While there isn’t much publicly available Modern Warfare 3 sales data yet, physical sales during its launch week in the UK were down 25% compared to its predecessor’s.

It seems the latest Call of Duty has a highly committed player base, even if it may be relatively small.

“Engagement is a better metric for measuring medium and long-term health, after you’ve gotten a lot of players in the door,” said Sean Lama, a digital planning and analytics manager at Ubisoft, in response to today’s announcment.

“Most multiplayer games can’t survive on on a small group of highly engaged players (see MultiVersus).

“Not that CoD will have trouble getting players in the door, but engagement at launch doesn’t say much.”

Further reading

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Early critic and user reviews suggest this may be the series' lowest point

Activision also confirmed today that Modern Warfare 3 Season 1 will launch on December 6.

At release, it will introduce two brand-new 6v6 multiplayer maps (Meat and Greece) and Warzone’s all-new Urzikstan map, among other features.

Sledgehammer Games released a new Modern Warfare 3 update today (see the patch notes) and will be running a double player, weapon and Battle Pass XP event from November 22-27.