Konami’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain generated a whopping $179 million in opening day revenue, according to a report in Adobe Digital Index’s on gaming trends. To put it into perspective, that’s nearly double the amount made by the Marvel epic, Avengers: Age of Ultron, which pulled in $89 million on its opening day in spring 2015.
Created by Hideo Kojima, The Phantom Pain achieved the feat on a smaller budget than the superhero blockbuster. The stealth-action title cost $80 million to produce, while Marvel’s adventure flick cost a massive $250 million. On the wider scale, video games will be worth $91.5 billion by the end of 2015, putting it ahead of the film industry’s worth, which is measured at $88.1 billion for the end of the year.
“The gaming industry is a lot bigger than most marketers realize,” commented Adobe’s Principal Analyst and Director, Tamara Gaffney. “These games get more social buzz on opening day than most movies do, and the revenue for one of the top games this year outdid the highest-grossing movie start [Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with $91 million] by nearly double.”
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released on September 1 worldwide for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PC, Xbox One and Xbox 360. The game takes place nine years after the events of its predecessor, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, as Big Boss, aka Punished Snake, embarks on a mission to Afghanistan to seek revenge on those responsible for the attack on Mother Base and also put him in a coma for nearly a decade. The Phantom Pain features a number of classic characters from the venerable franchise, including Ocelot, Kazuhira Miller, and Huey Emmerich, and features a massive open-world for players to explore, allowing them to tackle missions however they see fit.
The game is Kojima-san’s final Metal Gear title after a highly publicised falling out between the developer and his bosses at Konami. Despite this, he has insisted he will continue creating games for the rest of his life, and has ‘no regrets‘ over any events that have transpired during The Phantom Pain’s development. Konami has said that the franchise can continue without Kojima-san’s involvement, although nothing official has been announced in regards to future instalments in the series. Read our full review of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.