call-of-duty-World-at-War posts (Subscribe to this feed)

There's "No Russian" Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 off the top spot on the UK sales charts. Infinity Ward's mega-hit is killin' terrorists, civilians and retail at a solid tick, despite the seven percent sales drop from the prior week. The FPS has held the high ground for four weeks now, repelling solid competition from the footie fantasies of FIFA 10 and the hidden blades of Assassin's Creed 2.

Call of Duty: World at War maintained the number one position on the charts last year for five weeks, before FIFA 09 rushed the goal and scored the top spot during Christmas week. Thanks to retail promotions, game of the year candidate Batman: Arkham Asylum sales surged 122 percent, bringing the Dark Knight back onto the chart in the twenty spot.

Source -- Call of Duty still in command at No1 [Chart Track]
Source -- All formats chart [Chart Track]

Seriously, guys? Everyone on the planet runs out and buys Modern Warfare 2 and you're still playing Call of Duty 4 and World at War? We can understand you folks who chose to play Halo 3 -- the whole Modern Warfare 2 experience may not be your idea of a good time -- but Major Nelson's Xbox Live activity chart for the week of November 9 simply vexes us.

In less puzzling news, the XBLA activity is along the lines of something we're used to seeing. Trials HD remains atop the list, followed by Castle Crashers and South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play. Konami's Zombie Apocalypse also managed to survive the gauntlet and make its way onto the list and, combined with the recent release of Left 4 Dead 2, we feel mankind is finally starting to reach acceptable levels of preparation for the inevitable future of a world plagued by the undead.

Look, just feign surprise, it makes these financial posts so much more exciting: Activision today reported net revenues of $755 million (on a non-GAAP basis) in the quarter ending September 30, 2009 -- that's $55 million more than the suits hoped to stack, according to previous projections. While the blockbuster adaptation of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen might have played a part in this outpouring of our money, we're gonna go with Kotick's explanation: "Our performance was driven by positive audience response to Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero 5, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises, as well as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft."

In fact, the CEO called Guitar Hero the year's "#1 best-selling third-party franchise in North America and Europe" through September, claiming that U.S. sales of music games increased 72 percent year over year in September. Last year's big-band-box edition, World Tour, and Call of Duty: World at War combined for total, world domination, becoming this year's "#1 and #2 best-selling third-party titles" in North America and Europe through September, according to Activision. Additionally, World at War DLC map pack sales continued to climb last quarter and have now surpassed 7.5 million purchases.

Needless to say, the publisher is not backing off of its prior financial outlook. Activision anticipates annual net revenues of $4.5 billion (on a non-GAAP basis) at the close of the year. Did you remember to feign surprise?

Looks like this deal isn't just for Xbox 360 owners. Activision has slashed the price of the World at War map packs. As Richard noted, "it's just a cash grab before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 makes everyone forget World at War, but hey, it's hard to argue with cheap."

In addition to this sale, all World at War servers will feature double XP. If you want to partake in giving Activision even more money, you better hurry up: this deal ends on November 1st.

Remember the report that said the average Call of Duty: World at War player has spent $9 on DLC? It looks like that number is about to get just a bit higher, as Major Nelson has announced that all of the World at War map packs have been reduced to 400 ($5). That's half of the usual $10 price tag. Taking all three packs together, that's 12 maps for $15, putting them at a buck and a quarter each. Not bad. If you want to snag 'em on the cheap, you have until November 1.

Sure, it's probably just a cash grab before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 makes everyone forget World at War, but hey, it's hard to argue with cheap. Browse the available World at War DLC right here.

If there were any doubt left in your mind that Call of Duty is a popular franchise, a recent report from Gamasutra should firmly cement the fact in your mind. According to the piece, Call of Duty: World at War's three DLC packs digitally pushed 6.5 million units between March and mid-August of 2009 across the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

As you might imagine, those kind of numbers add up to a lot of extra revenue for the mega-publisher – the piece approximates a cool $45 million. Taking that one step further, the average cost of each box of CoD: WaW sold at retail becomes $65. We're not sure if that number accounts for the chunk taken out by Microsoft and Sony respectively for distribution, but even cut in half that's still a nice chunk of change.

So today, we'd like to officially announce that we're changing the site's name to Call of Duty: Joystiq. Call it a strategic business move – it's all about brand recognition, people!

Update: To be clear, the $45 million number is an approximation by Gamasutra, put together with information from NPD, EEDAR, and Activision PR. It was apparently calculated by taking 65% of 7 million units at $10 a piece, without accounting for giveaways or bundles.

Major Nelson has revealed the latest figures for Xbox Live activity, which once again sees Call of Duty: World at War being the most played Xbox 360 Live title. That's not to say it's all business as usual, as the Lost Planet 2 co-op demo managed to claw its way onto the list, along with a new Xbox Live Arcade pair, Shadow Complex and Trials HD.

Both titles made it onto the top two spots on XBLA's most played list, with Chair's Metroid-inspired adventure making its debut in first place. The remainder is comprised of usual suspects Battlefield 1943, Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 'Splosion Man.

In a very unsurprising turn of events, Activision has announced that the third downloadable map pack for Call of Duty: World at War was downloaded over one million times during its first weekend of availability (August 6 - 9). That figure is derived from both Xbox 360 and PS3 downloads. The console war doesn't impede the progress of real war! Real war in the ... game, we guess. That could have been phrased more cleverly.

Activision also revealed that all of the game's combined DLC has been downloaded a whopping 6.5 million times, which, based on the price of each pack, comes out to around $65,000,000. It's easy when you just have to multiply by ten!

Guys, do you ever play anything aside from four games? Major Nelson reports that last week's Xbox Live activity was very much the same as the week before ... and the week before that. Taking top spot was none other than Call of Duty: World at War, followed by usual suspects Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War 2. Madden 10 took last place, which isn't much of a surprise considering it released on Friday. Come next week, we're sure you'll be hearing more about that one.

On the XBLA side, it was all about Trials HD, as the title earned top honors. Turtles in Time Re-Shelled managed to shell shock the competition by taking second and DICE's Battlefield 1943 continues its sad story of decline, falling to third. Well, okay -- maybe it's not a sad story, per se.

If you're already a follower of our Twitter account, you'd know that we're giving away a boatload of codes for Call of Duty: World at War DLC Map Pack 3 on both 360 and PS3. We're going to be doing more throughout the day and next time we do a similar offering, we may not even warn you with a post on the site, so you'll probably want to start following our Twitter feed.

Heck, we may even give away a copy of Trials HD today. Who knows? Also, you might want to become a fan of ours on Facebook. Just sayin'.

Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin has a post up on the PlayStation Blog announcing a "Game with Developers" event for CoD: World at War this weekend. The battle goes down this Saturday, August 8 from 1-5PM, in celebration of the game's third map pack. To join in the festivities, add one (or all) of the PSN IDs to your friends list that we've listed after the break. Happy hunting!

After announcing late last month that Call of Duty: World at War would receive a third DLC map pack, the week has finally arrived for those of you patiently waiting. As if to bait your thirst all the more, Activision has handed over a new trailer and a handful of screens of the content in question -- "Battery," "Breach," "Revolution," and new zombie map "Der Riese."

More importantly, we'd like to point out that the game's developer, Treyarch, has finally gone all the way off the deep end and thrown in teleporters. Between the Nazi zombies and now this, we're getting all verklempt for the old days with Wolfenstein. What fun we had! Anyway, if this is your kind of thing, get your 800 ($10) and $9.99 ready to go for when the pack digitally arrives on XBLM and PSN (respectively) tomorrow.

Major Nelson's latest battle report comes as a bit of a surprise as Halo 3 was the most-played retail game of last week. With all of the new Gears of War 2 content, we were sure that game would be at the top, but Epic's title only managed to claw its way to fourth place yet again. It was bested by the usual double dose of Call of Duty action in Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty: World at War.

On the XBLA side, the frenetic tag-based combat of Marvel vs Capcom 2 was too much for the competition. Capcom's brawler enjoyed top placement, finally bumping down Battlefield 1943 to second place. Coming in at third was none other than 'Splosion Man, Twisted Pixel's excellent follow-up to previous Arcade hit, The Maw.

If thrashing guitars, zombies and Call of Duty: World at War are all things you enjoy, we have a treat for you! The above trailer for Map Pack 3, a new set of maps featuring three locales for multiplayer and one zombie-specific map, incorporates all of these things while highlighting the exploits of a group of Russian soldiers fighting off hordes of the undead. If you've enlisted for duty in all of the previous map packs (a very real possibility), then you'll probably be foaming at the mouth for this new bit of DLC while watching. Just, uh, check and see if you have glowing eyes. You may just be a zombie yourself.