Video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale, making it the best-selling ever in Britain.

The £47m worth of sales were twice that of Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 631,000 copies the first day it was available last year.

Meanwhile, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that it had blocked some of its 20 million Xbox Live users, who installed hardware to play pirated games, from using its online gaming service.