Black Ops II Outsells The Dark Knight In The 2012 Entertainment Charts

According to Chart-Track and Official Charts Company data Call Of Duty: Black Ops II outsold every other entertainment product in 2012 with a lead of over 70,000 units to second place, FIFA 13. Perhaps the media will stop thinking of video games as ‘niche’ now, but I doubt it.

The third best selling game was Assassin’s Creed III down in thirteenth place behind the rather quaint The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the rather rude Mrs Brown’s Boys. Halo 4, Hitman Absolution, Just Dance 4 and Far Cry 3 are the only other video games to feature.

Although Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II tops the table when viewed as individual units, if you combine the sales of the three Now That’s What I Call Music albums then they storm into the lead with sales of over three million.

The 2012 Entertainment top-40 in full:

  1. Call of Duty: Black Ops II – 2,672,364
  2. FIFA 13 – 2,601,877
  3. The Dark Knight Rises – 1,694,434
  4. The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn: Part 1 – 1,515,604
  5. Our Version of Events (Emeli Sande) – 1,446,844
  6. Now That’s What I Call Music 83 (Various Artists) – 1,389,006
  7. Avengers Assemble – 1,349,937
  8. TED- 1,188,295
  9. War Horse – 986,870
  10. The Hunger Games – 946,592
  11. Mrs Brown’s Boys – Series One – 913,145
  12. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – 888,629
  13. Assassin’s Creed III – 886,198
  14. Now That’s What I Call Music 82 (Various Artists) – 866,031
  15. Prometheus – 853,079
  16. Ice Age 4: Continental Drift – 819,009
  17. 21 (Adele) – 816,317
  18. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – 816,126
  19. + (Ed Sheeran) – 811,038
  20. Now That’s What I Call Music 81 (Various Artists) – 756,035
  21. Halo 4 – 753,489
  22. Born To Die (Lana del Rey) – 743,210
  23. Brave – 743,021
  24. Bridesmaids – 710,185
  25. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – 707,875
  26. Johnny English Reborn – 694,651
  27. Mrs Brown’s Boys: Series Two – 670,956
  28. The Amazing Spider-Man – 656,620
  29. The Woman In Black – 654,589
  30. Take Me Home (One Direction) – 643,433
  31. Right Place Right Time (Olly Murs) – 597,370
  32. The Adventures of TinTin – 597,282
  33. Babel (Mumford & Sons) – 592,173
  34. Mrs Brown’s Live Tour – Good Mourning – 585,925
  35. Michael McIntyre Showtime – 579,011
  36. Hitman Absolution – 571,248
  37. Just Dance 4 – 562,453
  38. Despicable Me – 549,111
  39. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – 545,502
  40. Far Cry 3 –  540,237

Source: Chart Track via Digital Spy

27 Comments

  1. That’s not bad for Far Cry given that it hasn’t been out all that long, and still figures highly in the games charts each week.

    • It’s the 7th highest selling game but still beaten by Despicable Me and that was released in Feb 2011.

      We’ve known for a long time that CoD and Fifa sell loads but it’s disappointing that most other games are easily beaten in charts like this. There’s not even a Nintendo game in site.

  2. Who the heck keeps buying Adele’s music. I wouldn’t mind if it was remotely good. But its good to see video games number 1 even if it’s COD, which I also hate

    • What? She is one of the only good, truly talented musicians around.

      • If I wanted to listen to a woman moan I’d rather listen to my Mrs. As I don’t, I don’t want to listen to a woman moaning in music. As for that skyfall I could think of better ways of boring the pants off me after hearing it the first time, let alone 10 millionth time.

      • the film bored me more than the song

      • Skyfall’s theme song was one of the worst Bond song’s, horrible backing vocals in that song.

    • I agree, boring music. People just like jumping on the band wagon now and again. Bit like saying Jake Bugg will be the next Bob Dylan….feck off !

  3. Not surprising really. The Dark Knight Rises was probably the worst out of the new reboot trilogy. Not saying it was rubbish, just not as good as Begins or The Dark Knight.
    Besides that, I bet the figures don’t include cinema viewings or rentals.

    • Is that entry for DVD/Blu-Ray sales? If that’s the case then you’d have to consider the following box office number:

      $1,081,041,287 (worldwide)

      I don’t know how much movie tickets in the US are but they are around 7-10€ in Germany so calculating with 10$ tickets that’s around 100 million people who saw the movie in a theatre. Compared to that, Call of Duty and FIFA do look quite laughable.

      • Brainfart. That list above is UK only, right? In that case the box office figure would be:

        $77.8 million

        Again, at 10$ tickets that’s still 7,78 million tickets sold.

      • Its for UK only. And its units sold, not revenue. If you did revenue that Black Ops 2 easily beats all the movies as well.

        But thanks for playing.

      • That’s why I divided by the ticket price to roughly get a ballpark number for the number of tickets sold.
        Obviously that comparison is not perfect, but comparing the DVD/Blu-Ray sales numbers to a video game isn’t either. When you purchase a game, you get to experience it for the first time. A DVD/Blu-Ray release marks the second chance to getting to experience the movie.
        If the DKR was a direct to DVD/Blu-Ray release I’m sure the numbers would be quite different.

      • Youre comparing bums on seats with CDs sold. That doesnt work. Compare number of copies of the film released vs CDs, that works, physical media vs physical media. In which case, cinema fails as there are only a few thousand copies of each film.

        If you compare “people enjoying the entertainment medium” then you;re in even more trouble – how many radio plays has Adele had this year? Each time she’s one radio 1, a couple of million people enjoy her song. Also copies of games get resold multiple times.

        These are comparisons of SOLD media. Lets see how Skyfall does V Modern Warfare 4.

    • Skyfall took $161 million in the UK (about £110m) in 2012. It’d be quite tight between CoD and Skyfall. 2.67m at £40 each is just under £107m.

      They’re both approximate figures but close enough to show that its far from a certainty who would win.

  4. This is really interesting comparison. Shows how big gaming is but also reinforces what I already suspected. People are stupid. Mrs Brown’s Boys is bloody awful!

    • Another sane individual! Nice to meet you.

      Mrs Brown’s boys is awful. Just unfunny garbage. Never understood the popularity of it.

      • I wouldn’t have thought it was that popular outside of Ireland.

        If you were Irish I’d imagine you’d like it.

      • Lies.

        If you were Irish you’d hate it even more.

    • You calling me stupid? OUTSIDE NOW!!!

    • Got to agree with you there about Mrs browns boys,i just don’t get it.Also Skyfall wasn’t as good as they made it out to be and i don’t know how Adele won the oscar for best song.

  5. I preferred The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to AC III but I saw it at the cinema so to wouldn’t have counted in this list. Then again I rented AC III so i doubt that would appear either.

    Considering how much I rent I think Despicable Me is the first thing in the list I actually own (though I’ve seen nearly every film and played nearly every game on the list).

    I’d expect quite a few of those would get a boost from rentals and cinema viewings as well. Skyfall viewers at the cinema last year would be around 3 to 4 times that of CoD.

  6. I’d love to see worldwide sales figures for the year.

  7. Cod sales fell slightly from 2011, Fifa went up by about 400k but sales on the whole seem to have fallen.

    AC III wouldn’t have even broken the top 20 in 2011. I wonder if this includes digital sales.

    2011
    01 21 – Adele (3.9m) Album
    02 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2.8m) Game
    03 Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 1 (2.5m) Video
    04 FIFA 12 (2.2m) Game
    05 Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 2 (2.1m) Video
    06 The Inbetweeners Movie (2.1m) Video
    07 The King’s Speech (1.9m) Video
    08 Christmas – Michael Buble (1.3m) Album
    09 Doo-Wops & Hooligans – Bruno Mars (1.3m) Album
    10 19 – Adele (1.3m) Album
    11 Battlefield 3 (1.2m) Game
    12 Now That’s What I Call Music 80 (1.2m) Album
    13 Despicable Me (1.2m) Video
    14 Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger (1.1m) Video
    15 Paul (1.1m) Video
    16 Zumba Fitness (1.1m) Game
    17 Tangled (1.0m) Video
    18 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (1.0m) Game
    19 Peter Kay – Live – The Tour That Didn’t (1.0m) Video
    20 Bridesmaids (980,000) Video

  8. That list is proof enough that the human race really does need another Ice age.

  9. This list can’t be right. There is no adult content in that list.

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