Activision Sells 3.3M Warcraft Games on First Day

Activision Blizzard Inc sold 3.3 million copies of its latest "World of Warcraft" game in its first day on the market.

The company said on Monday that "World of Warcraft: Cataclysm," which launched December 7, surpassed the record set by the previous "World of Warcraft" release in November 2008.

The multiplayer online game has 12 million subscribers around the world, providing the company with steady and recurring revenue. Roughly half of those subscribers are in Asia, and the other half are in western countries, analysts say.

"Assuming the positive trends extend beyond the first 24 hours post-release, we expect stable to slightly higher subscriber levels for WoW in North America and Europe," Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian said in a research note.

Nearly 40 percent of Activision's revenue comes from "massively multiplayer" online role-playing games.

Shares of Santa Monica, California-based Activision fell 2 percent to $11.99 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.