While the whole Infinity Ward vs. Activision battle rages on, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 surpassed a milestone this week. Robert Bowling, a Creative Strategist for Infinity Ward posted a tweet saying “…annnd we JUST hit 25 MILLION unique players on Modern Warfare 2. Insanity! Also, got a lot of #MW2 DLC details coming this week! FINALLY!”.

Sure, 25 million players is no Farmville, but its still enough people to make the Modern Warfare population higher than that of North Korea.

As many of you know, there has been a bit of a debacle between the head honchos of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, and Activision. Long story short, Infinity Ward is suing Activision for the hefty sum of $36 million in damages for unpaid royalties. The cause of the problem, on paper, is West and Zampella were “insubordinate” and breached their contract with Activision.

How did the former heads of Infinity Ward breach their contract? Unfortunately, but understandably, the contracts in question were not attached to the Complaint and are unlikely to be released to the public. However, West/Zampella refer to a series of contracts between themselves and Activision in the Complaint. Keep in mind that the terms of these alleged contracts were not between Activision and Infinity Ward, which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision, and that the Complaint sets forth merely allegations and not actual evidence.

The first employment contract was for a three-year term, which began in 2003 after Activision purchased Infinity Ward. This initial contract gave Activision the option to extend it for two more one-year successive terms and Activision picked up this option. By doing so, West/Zampella were still under contract through October 2008. After the successful release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007, Activision allegedly wanted to extend the contracts of West/Zampella in order to create a sequel. Factually, that’s where things began to get murky.

Yesterday, news came around that Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West may have been given the boot. Today, Activision finally responded by announcing that Vince and Jason have indeed left the company and that Activision Publishing CTO Steve Pearce and Head of Production Steve Ackrich are temporarily in charge of Infinity Ward.

Putting another rumor to rest, Activision has confirmed that Treyarch is currently developing a Call of Duty title for release in late 2010. Activision went on to say that (relatively) newly created Sledgehammer Games would also be developing a new Call of Duty title in the action-adventure genre. Infinity Ward, on the other hand, will be busy working on two map packs, which are slated to be released sometime in 2010. Unfortunately, there was no mention of Modern Warfare 3, which is leaves its development status still up in the air. With hints that a subscription-based Call of Duty is in the pipeline, speculation still stands that maybe MW3 won’t be developed by IW.

UPDATE 10:43AM CST: G4tv is now reporting both studio heads, president Jason West and CEO Vince Zampella, have left Infinity Ward. There has been no official comment from either company.

UPDATE 6:40AM CST: As the evening went on, it seems a little more light has been shed on the situation at Infinity Ward. A screenshot allegedly from Jason West’s Facebook account popped up over at Kotaku and was subsequently verified by Klepek from G4tv as being genuine, as well as an image grab from his LinkedIn account showing his employment at Infinity Ward ending in March 2010.

Imagine having to pay a monthly fee to play Call of Duty. What a horrible thought, right? Well this idea could become an unfortunate reality. During the recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick stated:

“If you think about the success that we’ve had in other product categories on subscription, you can get a sense of the direction that we want to take that [Call of Duty] franchise.”

Yikes. We can agree that when he says “success” he really means the copious amounts of cold hard cash that the franchise rakes in. Seems a lot like a corporate giant’s typical greed to me rather than focusing on keeping their gamers happy.

Hot on the heels of THQ and EA, Activision Blizzard today hosted a conference call to report their December quarter and calendar year 2009 results.  As always, a little news made its way into the presentation.

Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, started out by letting everyone know that Activision had just delivered, “the most profitable year in our company’s history,” before moving on to a few other interesting tidbits.

For instance, DJ Hero was the highest grossing new intellectual property launched in 2009, though I’m not sure whether that is good or bad news.  Perhaps less surprising,  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has sold more than $1 billion in retail sales worldwide.

Been upset with people abusing the care package glitch in Modern Warfare 2?  Then Infinity Ward has a gift for you.  Robert Bowling of Infinity Ward, aka “fourzerotwo” announced in a tweet that a patch for the problem, as well as a few others, would be coming soon.

According to a post on Infinity Ward’s website, the patch has already made its way to PS3 consoles, but is awaiting certification by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The full details of the patch are included below.

I love when stories like this hit the internet. According to a poll by an online UK discount site MyVoucherCodes (now that’s credibility if I’ve ever seen it), one in five women have kicked their partner to the curb for an overindulgence in gaming or surfing the web. The “research” goes further by stating 80% of women believe their significant other spends too much time gaming and 70% cited it as a cause for arguments. On the other side, 72% of men felt their better halves were on the internet too much, but only 6% thought it was grounds for walking out the door. And what game was blamed for the most conflicts? You guessed it: Call of Duty.

NPD recently released its list of the top ten best selling domestic non-PC titles and we have a surprise winner. It’s not an Xbox 360 title, nor a PS3 one; it is in fact a Wii release. And a mini-game compilation to boot.

The winner is: Wii Play.

When you think about it, the result isn’t too surprising. Being bundled with a Wii Remote and only being priced a few dollars more makes Wii Play an attractive option for Wii owners.

The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has just received a new patch via IW-NET.

Robert Bowling, Community Manager over at Infinity Ward spilled the beans via his own personal blog; fourzerotwo.

Details of the update are as follows:

Major Nelson reported a few days ago on the top titles of 2009 on Xbox Live. His lists included the most played games of the year by connectivity, the most played Xbox Live Arcade titles as well as lists for top Windows games and Top original Xbox titles.

The notable call-outs include Halo 3 taking top honors as having the most unique users play the game over Live throughout the year. Following this, we have the latest three Call of Duty games and Gears of War 2. On the Arcade side of things, Battlefield 1943 and the still-awesome Castle Crashers took the number one and two spots respectively.

Check out the lists below.

Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has passed the $1 billion mark in sales. Amazingly, it made over half of that in its first 5 days as we all witnessed the hype and record-breaking online players.

In terms of how many copies of the game were picked up by those eager to shoot their digital enemies, MW2 has already passed the 14.4 million units its predecessor Modern Warfare (1) sold two years prior.

This just goes to show how the video game industry has taken over the film industry. Why watch a movie when you can control the lead within the cinematic experience, right?

After the uber success that was Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward can do whatever it wants. Well, it should be able to do whatever it wants anyway.

With all the rumors, speculation and confusion surrounding the future of the Call of Duty franchise, we have another rumor to throw into the mix. I’ve previously reported on some speculation of the next installments of Activision’s prize Call of Duty franchise and now it might be possible that one of those ideas could be coming to fruition.

The latest rumor from Destructoid states that Infinity Ward has been hiring some MMO developers from Sony Online Entertainment as well as the help from Blizzard employee. The plan is apparently to continue the annual releases of Call of Duty games with this MMO running alongside them at the same time.

EA has been throwing punches at Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 for a while now with claims that their DICE studio’s new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 would keep dedicated servers for PC gamers, valuing them and the importance of PC gameplay and customization.

Now they’re trying to throw the full one-two punch with one being the release of the newest Battlefield installment…

Here’s some news that may get fans of the record-breaking event release of Modern Warfare 2 a little disappointed; According to an inside source of VG247, Infinity Ward will not be making Modern Warfare 3 as per the Activision tradition of semi-annual releases alternating between Treyarch and Infinity Ward.

They refer to an older quote from Infinity Ward headmaster Rob Bowling where he says they’re not sure what they’re working on next (when the answer should be clear). They continue to report that their source says a Canadian studio would be handling MW3 and that another source points to the new addition to Activision and Call of Duty in the form of Sledgehammer Games.

The internet rumor mill is abuzz with news of the next installment of the monolithic Call of Duty series. The rumor is that Treyarch and Activision are purchasing rights to many 1960s era music including some Cuban and African tunes. This is a pretty strong hint towards what’s coming up next for one of our favorite shooters. The developers at Activision have also said that they are pleased to be finished with the World War II era and are happy to move on to new and fresher settings.

I’m very interested to see how they will handle the Vietnam Era if this be the case. No game has been able to capture the tension of jungle warfare very realistically. There are so many opportunities for superior camouflage and ambushes. There should be new multiplayer tactics to match up with the dense environment filled equally with cover and natural hazards.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 banked a decent (read: rec0rd-breaking) amount in sales when it launched last month to rave reviews and record-breaking online player numbers.

Activision’s goal with the sequel to Modern Warfare was to earn the same money we see in blockbuster films and they succeeded like none have done before. So, with that success comes curiousity and speculation to the franchise which as traditionally had one game released per year, alternating between its two developers: Treyarch and their current World at War franchise and Infinity Ward with their Modern Warfare series.

As we now know, these two studios have absolutely no ties together other than the branding and work in their own ways to develop their titles. Sadly, this means for us players that they don’t work to include the best parts of each others’ titles into their own.

Well, now that MW2 has been launched and we may see a (rumored) Cold War-themed World at War 2 next Fall, Activision has recently added a THIRD developer to work on another Call of Duty property.

It’s about time we start sharing cool gameplay videos, something I’ve been meaning to do for week. Today marks the first day we conduct our Video of the Week feature where we’ll share any cool or funny gameplay videos we find or can think of for that week.

Two of the game ranters chimed in a few days back with a suggestion for this week’s video, coming from Modern Warfare 2, showing off a very cocky player putting on a show and performing a ninja kill.

Check out the video below and see why war games do not equal reality.

EA has promised to unveil their Medal of Honor reboot at the Spike TV 2009 Video Game Awards on December 12, giving us our first look into what they claim will be the most realistic modern war experience to date. Given that Modern Warfare 2 – Medal of Honor’s main competition – is hardly a realistic war sim, it will be interesting to see if the new MoH will be simply a Modern Warfare ripoff, or if they plan on actually going with a more simulator style to the game.

Given that they keep pushing the fact that they are working with actual ‘Tier 1 Operators’ from the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it seems they might be going for realism. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with to re-gain a foothold in the FPS genre after not having released any installments to the series since 2007. Medal of Honor hit it big with gamers everywhere before the first Call of Duty even existed but in recent years, they’ve fallen flat while Activision’s development teams have been pumping out new CoD games annually.

Hey Game Ranters, it’s Thursday, which means Sony has updated the PlayStation Store with new games, applications, and customizations for your PS3 and PSP. In addition to the PlayStation Store update we’ll also be covering retail game releases for the upcoming Tuesday as well.

This week on retails shelves sees the release of recently-shuttered Pandemic Studios’ title The Saboteur which suffered numerous production setbacks but is finally ready for release. The $49.99 price tag makes the package appealing but with numerous bargains available through the holiday season, there’s likely several other titles discerning gamers would rather check out. James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game arrives on UMD for the PSP; though, like most movie tie-ins, the game is mostly an uninspired endeavor.

Even celebrities love their classic games.

On a recent episode of Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night, Robin Williams is questioned about his love of gaming. He says he is a big fan of Call of Duty and has been “playing for a long time.”

In the video, he talks about the age gap between himself and a 10-year-old, and how he gets the occasional foreign gamer. Two of his children, Cody and Zelda, are named after classic video games, the latter being quite clear. He does not specify on Cody’s namesake, but does make his love for the legend very obvious.

In a recent press release from Activision Blizzard, the Call of Duty franchise was touted as having earned more than $3 billion in retail sales worldwide. This milestone was made recently possible by the huge success of Modern Warfare 2 which brought in $550 million in the first five days. This just beat out the previous record holder Grand Theft Auto IV’s 5-day $500 million record.  The Call of Duty franchise as a whole has sold more than 55 million copies of its various titles worldwide.

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, acknowledged the success of the franchise saying:

“Call Of Duty has become one of the greatest entertainment franchises of all time. If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history.”

Remember Modern Warfare 2? That Infinity-Ward shooter that people seem to be enjoying? Well GameStop certainly remembers it. They recently announced their Q3 revenues to be $1.83 billion (up 8.2% from the same period last year).

Net income, however, is up 11.8% (hitting $52.2 million) mostly due to a 19.4% rise in the sales of used-products. GameStop stated that MW2 has had the biggest launch of the company’s history, selling 2.5 million units in 72 hours. The hit title and latest installment of the Call of Duty has also broken the record for GameStop’s most pre-ordered game and achieved $550 million in sales during the opening week (GTA4 had $500 million).

One of the many actors on my list of favorites is Kevin McKidd, most known for his role as Lucius Vorenus in the awesome but short-lived HBO series, Rome.

What really grabbed my attention from the Scottish-born actor is that for a very long time, years ago, he was rumored to play Thor in Marvel’s first live-action adaptation for the character. While that didn’t end up happening, McKidd’s kept busy with other work including the 13-episode series, Journeyman, Grey’s Anatomy (for which he currently stars) and more recently, the voice of Captain “Soap” MacTavish in one of the most successful games ever: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The New  York Post’s Pop Wrap had a chance to speak with the actor where they discussed the in-development Rome movie as well as the possibility of McKidd playing a part in the Call of Duty movie.

On account that news about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is dominating every facet of the world at the moment, DC comics is looking to cash in by expanding its universe via a six-issue comic book tie-in this winter.

DC’s Wildstorm offshoot will be handling the series that is said to focus on the background of fan favorite character, Ghost. Not too surprising considering all the speculation floating around this week about the Ghost character receiving his own spin-off title.

With both Infinity Ward and Treyarch Corporation taking their turns at producing Activision’s super successful Call of Duty franchise in unison (Modern Warfare is Infinity Ward, World at War is Treyarch) many would have often thought the two forces collaborate with one another.

But they don’t.

Infinity Ward Creative Strategist Robert Bowling revealed that the two design studios indeed act like completely non-related studios, focusing on their own productions and work schedules, placing zero focus on collaborating efforts inter-studio:

That’s right ladies & gentlemen, now you can take Nazi Zombies wherever you go! Activision has recently released an iPhone game based on a popular multiplayer mode available in Call of Duty: World at War.

Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies can be played with either the tilt mechanics or the virtual analog sticks. It will include Leaderboard support as well as full support for future DLC . It will also have “a full list of Unique Achievements” and can play up to four players through Wi-Fi/Internet (2-players through Bluetooth).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been out just a mere few days and there is already word of a spin-off for one of the lead characters. Sergeant Simon “Ghost” Riley will allegedly be starring in his very own game created by Infinity Ward. In an interview with ThatVideoGameBlog at a recent launch event, they interviewed voice actor Craig Fairbrass, where he mentioned that a “Ghost” spin-off is being talked about right now.

“I did in the last game a voice for a character called Gaz and in this game I’m now voicing a guy called Ghost, who now just got a spin-off comic of his own and they’re talking about another little game to go with it”

Buy low, sell high – the time-honored mantra behind stock investments. Keep it in mind and remember it always because that’s how Bobby Kotick made $20+ million in three days. Paying attention now, aren’t we?

That’s right folks, Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, made just over $20 million in a recent three-day stock sale sparked by (you guessed it) the record-breaking sales of Modern Warfare 2, and I think he’s earned it for turning Activision around from almost filing bankruptcy in 1991. Since then, the company has been moving forward and releasing classic titles such as Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure (2003, Gamecube, PS2) and Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (1999, PlayStation).

If you have modded your Xbox to play pirated games, you may be in for a big surprise the next time you try to connect to Xbox Live. According to Information Week, Microsoft has banned over 1 million modified systems from their online service. A Microsoft spokesperson commented on the situation:

“All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty, and result in a ban from Xbox Live.”

It is not known how Microsoft is detecting these modded consoles. Considering they have found 5% of their Xbox Live users are pirates, it appears to be an effective one. Some speculate the bannings are related to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,  which will likely be the biggest Xbox Live game of the year. Leaked versions of the game were showing up on torrent sites over a week before the game’s release. It’s not surprising Microsoft decided to take action against those who downloaded it illegally and played early.