The first sales numbers for Modern Warfare 2 have come out, with the United Kingdom's ChartTrack group releasing the earliest sales figures for that market. To make a long story short, the predictions that this game would be one of the best-selling of all time are looking more and more accurate. To make a short story longer, a record number 1.23 million copies of the game were sold to the limeys on opening day, generating £47 million ($78 million) in revenue. If you're the kind of person who likes to extrapolate statistics, this means that MW2 sold almost twice as many units on opening day as the previous record holder GTA IV (613,000 games sold for £27.2 million).

Michael Rawlinson, Director General of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, a British trade group, was pleased by the figure, saying:

"These first day sales figures are astonishing and clear evidence that videogames are now mainstream in the UK. Our form of interactive entertainment has completely come of age. Just like some movies and books, this is specifically intended for an adult audience and accordingly has emotional, adult content. So, as an 18-rated videogame, it is important that this game is not played by children, and parents should be appropriately vigilant."

It doesn't take a genius or a crystal ball to know that these kinds of day one sales figures will not be unique to the UK. Anyone who drove past a game store at midnight on Tuesday knows that the US market will most likely have its own record broken. However, there are a host of other questions that are left unanswered. First of all, although MW2 is going to sell a shit-ton this week, one has to wonder if it will have the kind of staying power to keep it at the top of the charts throughout the holiday season. It's entirely possible that everyone who wants the game has already purchased a copy. The other question that remains up in the air is how exactly the mainstream media will react to these numbers. The logical part of my mind wants to think that such a large number of adults making an informed choice to buy an M-rated game would get fair treatment from news outlets. It would be nice to think that the story might be that games, and the people who play them, have grown up. However, the part of my mind that lives in the real world believes that the larger the number of people who buy the game, the more faux outrage the media will spew.

[SOURCE]