Call of Duty: Black Ops: Way bigger than whatever this is.
Call of Duty: Black Ops hit $360,000,000 in day one sales in North America and the U.K. alone. Wow. For a little comparison, Halo: Reach sold $200,000,000 on it's launch day globally. Activision Publishing Inc. is declaring it the 'Biggest Entertainment Launch in History.' And they're right. That number kicks all sorts of movie butt. The highest single day box office gross in history is a movie I refuse to acknowledge, but its opening day take was $72,703,754. And COD:Black Ops doesn't have a single glittery vampire.
"But what about the space shuttle, that has to be the biggest launch ever, right?" Well, no, it isn't. According to Ask an Astronomer for KIDS: "The Space Shuttle weighs 165,000 pounds empty. Its external tank weighs 78,100 pounds empty and its two solid rocket boosters weigh 185,000 pounds empty each." That's 613,000 pounds, before you add fuel. And no, fuel does not count for this exercise, since it's doing the lifting, not being the lifted.
Activision reports the title moved 5.6 million copies in North America and the U.K. After conducting due diligence, and asking the internet just how much the average video game weighs, we can safely assume anywhere between 4 ounces to half a pound, depending on the manual. We'll go with half a pound, since that's about as much math as I can handle on a Thursday. So 2.8 million pounds of video game just got launched all over North America and the U.K. That also explains why the manual is a paltry 6 pages long. The only thing that could beat this record is if Chuck Norris somehow uppercut Godzilla, who weighs between 40 million and 110 million pounds. Then that would be the biggest thing launched. Ever.