Call of Duty: Black Ops II was released on Tuesday, November 13, and it has blown the competition out of the water.

Black Ops II, the ninth Call of Duty (CoD) game, raked in over $500 million dollars in sales- in just 24 hours.  The futuristic first-person shooter is poised to become the most successful video game of the 2012 holiday season (it already has an enormous amount of success right out of the gate).

To put it in some perspective: Halo 4, which took the title of biggest entertainment launch of 2012 from Marvel’s The Avengers, made $220 million dollars in its first 24 hours of release.  Black Ops II has already taken said title right out of Halo’s hands, and it is likely that the CoD game will become not only the most successful entertainment launch of 2012, but of all time.

This is awe-inspiring, but not completely unexpected; currently, the three most successful launches of all time are (in order of most to least successful) CoD: Modern Warfare 3, CoD: Black Ops and CoD: Modern Warfare 2.  Mind you, this is all mediums, not just video-games. James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful movie of all time, was less successful than the aforementioned titles.

The Call of Duty franchise has once again proven its place in popular culture.  Black Ops II has gone outside the comfort zone of the CoD franchise by bringing it to the future, but taking such a risk has payed off- literally.  Black Ops II is poised to become the highest-grossing title of any entertainment medium, and with its huge fan-base giving it rave reviews, the adrenaline-fueled shooter is clearly one of the best video-games of the decade.