Modern Warfare 3 breaks records despite terrible review scores

Modern Warfare 3 may be one of the most polarizing Call of Duty games in history, but it's also delivering record-breaking performance along the way.

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It's no secret that MW3 is in the crosshair right now. The game looks to have the worst review score out of any Call of Duty title and has been put on blast for its short campaign. Bloomberg reports indicated that Modern Warfare III was cobbled together in just 16 months, which is a far cry from the multi-year timeline that Activision developers typically spend on COD games.

Despite the negative pushback, Modern Warfare 3 is still setting a new high water mark for the the new MW trilogy. According to a recent update, MW3 has enjoyed more engagement than 2022's Modern Warfare 2 and 2019's Modern Warfare.

"Thank you for a historic launch. Just two weeks in, MWIII has already set records with the highest engagement in the new Modern Warfare trilogy."

That metric is a bit vague, and while we don't have any numbers (nor will we get that info now that Microsoft owns Activision), the publisher says that the players are spending more hours in MW3 than they did in MW or MW2, and that the new MWZ zombies mode is the "most engaging third mode in MW history"

Another breakthrough with MW3 is that players are spending more time in the campaign itself. This is interesting and may be attributed to some degree to a Streisand Effect of sorts--gamers are buzzing about how short the campaign is, which may drive others to try it out for themselves.