Black Ops, Kinect Lead UK To Highest-Grossing Week Ever

The major launches of Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft's Kinect helped lead the UK's retail video game industry to its biggest-grossing week of all time, says trade body UKIE and GFK Chart-Track. The total £113.8 million ($182.89 million) brought in during the week ending November 12 beats the previous record total, which was £107.6 million ($172.9 million) in the 52nd week of 2008. Black Ops takes much of the credit; although most analysts don't expect the title's sales over the long-term can match Modern Warfare 2, its launch, by the numbers, was the strongest yet seen in the UK. To contextualize this record sum, Black Ops brought in more revenue in its opening week than the rest of the UK games market did over the past two weeks combined, reports Chart-Track. In North America and the UK together, the title sold 5.6 million units on its opening day, to the tune of $360 million -- up 19 percent over Modern Warfare 2's launch. According to Chart-Track's latest figures, the game sold 2 million units in the UK alone over 5 days. That's 13 percent more than Modern Warfare 2, and Black Ops' £81.9 million ($131.6 million) in UK revenue last week is 21 percent more than Modern Warfare 2's, helping create the record-setting revenue week for the region. Although demand for Microsoft's Kinect appears to be high, with supplies short at retail and units selling for premiums on eBay, specific sales figures for the device have not yet been announced. But UKIE says that Kinect's launch also helped create last week's sales record, with 8 out of 11 Kinect launch titles hitting Chart-Track's top 40. Top among them is Kinect Sports, which debuted in the 4th spot on the individual platforms chart just after the multiplatform release of Black Ops. "The video games and interactive entertainment industry has already seen a great start to quarter 4 2010, and the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft’s Kinect adds to this," says UKIE director general Michael Rawlinson. Thanks to new formats, social games and more, one in three people in the UK are playing video games of some stripe, says Rawlinson. "Given the huge audiences for games on all formats, 2010 has been a year of unprecedented activity and focus," he says. "And with more video games than ever before being played, on an ever growing range of games consoles, PCs, mobile phones, mobile devices and internet enabled TVs, the industry has widened beyond all expectations and will continue to expand exponentially in 2011," adds Rawlinson.