Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launches: are you onboard?

The countdown has officially begun, and not the one leading up to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but the one that marks the time before the entire world has access to the game so that they might play together online. Over in England at London's Old Billingsgate Market there's been a gigantic launch party with music, dancing, and running at high speed as the game was handed out to attendees – or there would have been if 574 Game and Gamestation stores across the country hadn't also released the game to queues of fans having waited for hours before launch. The world record lies on the line, the entertainment-industry record for most revenue generated in its opening five days having been set by the last Call of Duty game, Black Ops.

Now we must lie in wait as more and more contestants join the bigtime battle in individual battles against one another in the most advanced first-person shooter on earth. For those of you that do not know, this game has two kinds of gameplay, one single-player with a storyline, the other being multiplayer, one that in the year since the last expansion Black Ops was launched saw 2.6 billion hours of gameplay logged by players around the globe. Statistics sited by the Guardian note more than 19 million people playing Call of Duty online every month, with 6.5 million people playing each day.

If this next expansion is able to pull in more than $650 million in the next five days combined, it will be the next record holding as the most revenue generated in five days by a game. Will you contribute to this ultimate goal? Have another peek at a couple of videos for and of the game and see if you're up for it.

[via Guardian]