Call of Duty fires on record sales

Activision Blizzard has shot the lights out with its latest Call of Duty game, beating out even film franchise behemoths. Elon Musk meanwhile is wasting no time tinkering at Twitter while Australia’s biggest miner calls for a ban on petrol cars. These are the five big stories from the week that was

1. Duty calls

What if we told you the biggest opening weekend of the year wasn’t a film but a video game and it isn’t even close? 

Released last week, Activision Blizzard’s latest Call Of Duty game raked in an astonishing US$800 million in its first three days. 

To put that in perspective, Dr. Strange and the new Top Gun film combined made less on opening. Sure, it’s not a perfect comparison but still. Big bucks. 

Marvel and EA now look to be getting in on the action, announcing a new three-game deal.

2. Week one

Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk wants to introduce an $8 subscriber tier, bring back Vine, fire more people and potentially even move the company to Texas.

That’s just week one of his leadership. Is it going to prove a masterstroke or end in tears for Musk? It could go either way at this stage.

3. No more

Australia’s largest company, mining giant BHP, is calling on Australian governments to ban petrol cars by 2035.

Having recently sold off its oil assets to Woodside and dug into critical minerals like nickel and copper, it’s clearly betting on EVs.

4. No vacancy

Airbnb just had its most profitable ever quarter, on the back of strong growth across stays and experiences, but investors didn’t like it.

Forecasting a “bumpy” travel recovery ahead, Airbnb warned of the danger of inflation cutting into budgets. Some owners however are reporting record vacancies. 

5. Budget cuts

Rate hikes aside, this week’s company news was one defined by its cuts with Match Group, Lyft, and Stripe all announcing major layoffs.

The expectation that companies will cut costs amid economic uncertainty has everyone reading from the same script. Even Amazon is following along.