Black Ops to sell over 10m units in US

Although not due for release until November 9, Activision and Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops is generating enough interest to sell over 10.7 million units in its first year on sale in the US, according to Cowan & Company.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game is already in the top ten pre-order charts at Amazon.com and GameStop.com, with analyst Doug Creutz suggesting that the high-profile departure of talent from Activision hasn't harmed the Call of Duty brand.

"This is a very impressive display of strength and we believe the title is headed for a better comparison versus last year’s Modern Warfare 2 than we had originally assumed," said Creutz. "We are increasing our estimate for the franchise from a -29 per cent year on year unit decline to a -17 per cent year on year decline.

"We believe our revised estimate could still prove conservative, and note that a strong performance by the Treyarch-developed Black Ops would help combat the notion that the departure of key Infinity Ward talent could permanently impair the Call of Duty franchise."

It's not all good news for Activision, however, with the Cowan & Company underwhelmed by the success of the recently released racer from Bizarre Creations, Blur.

"Based on extremely weak initial checks, we now expect Blur to sell less than 1 million units worldwide in its first year," said Creutz. "Although the title achieved a decent 82 Metacritic rating, its launch one week after Disney’s entrant in the racing genre, Split/Second, appears exceptionally ill-timed."