Signal Hill analysts now say a downloadable add-on for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has topped 2.5 million in the first week of availability.
The so-called Stimulus Package is available for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console only, and was downloaded more than 1 million times in 24 hours, which set a new Xbox Live record. It then picked up an additional 1.5 million throughout the rest of the week, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard noted.
Since the game was first released in November, gamers have played more than 1.75 billion collective hours fragging one another online.
Even though gamers may be a tad bit touchy when it comes to shelling out cash for add-ons and modifications, the Call of Duty game series has been extremely popular for Activision Blizzard. Last November the company announced the game series has topped $3 billion revenue -- and that number has gone up with the popularity of CoD: MW2.
The game has become so popular, Activision plans to open a new game studio specifically tasked with CoD game development.
"The ongoing interest in the title nearly five months after release is a positive indicator of franchise strength," said Colin Sebastian, Lazard Capital Markets analyst, in a statement with CNBC. "Call of Duty games continue to set the standard for online multi-player game-play, and the map packs help to maintain user engagement in between the annual releases."
Activision Blizzard expects to release another downloadable add-on for Modern Warfare 2 sometime before the end of the year. The latest game is expected to be released sometime this fall, but details of the new title remain sparse.
