After proving its mettle in international markets when sales figures rolled in earlier in the week, Gears of War 3's worldwide appeal has now been validated, as Major Nelson's blog has been updated with sales figures for the game's first week.

Most notably, the game has topped 3 million units in sales, a number that handily outclasses the 2 million units the original sold during its debut (according to IGN). The strong showing for Gears 3 has pushed the total income for the franchise to over a billion dollars since the original game released five years ago. Gears of War 3 has also taken the top slot as the year's biggest seller after just one week on the market.

Of course, when it comes to sales figures, the elephant in the room is Activision's Call of Duty franchise. While it is a multiplatform game, Black Ops managed to rake in $650 million in its first week of sales (via GamesRadar), eventually selling 8.4 million units on five platforms -- Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, and DS -- in its first month (also via GamesRadar). Activision rarely presents sales figures for their games early in their retail availability, and the NPD no longer breaks down sales by platform, but given Call of Duty's performance on the 360, you can see that Modern Warfare 3 will provide tough competition for Gears' Xbox sales dominance come early November.