world-at-war posts (Subscribe to this feed)

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.

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.

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.

If your devout WASDing-and-mousing ways have turned you into a frequent player of Call of Duty: World at War on the PC, you'll be pleased to know that Treyarch hasn't forgotten about you. The oft-downloaded Map Pack 2 that hit Xbox 360 and PS3 last month will be making its way to PCs in World at War's next update, Patch 1.5.

According to Treyarch community manager J.D. (a.k.a. JD_2020 on the Treyarch forums), the patch is "in test right now, and is looking great." For those of you who remained spitefully out of the loop on the map bundle, it includes three standard levels -- Bonsai, Corrosion and Sub Pens -- and a swampy, undead-plagued stage called "Shi No Numa," which we believe is Japanese for "Oh crap, Zombies."

[Via Evil Avatar]

Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War has been quite the retail success for Activision, as Edge has revealed the game has sold a ridiculous 11 million copies across all platforms. And Activision is mighty proud, as the company's strategy of alternating development on the franchise has paid off. Add the success of the game's DLC, and you've got yourself one nice money-printing machine.

Yeah, we're still work-shopping the name. Anyway, Activision sent a bunch over for the 360, and we thought we'd pass them along to you, our trusted friends. So here's the deal: We've got seven codes, and we've hidden them in other Call of Duty-related posts from the past (just to make things interesting). If you find one and use it, let us know in the comments (and give us the number, if you don't mind). We've got seven to give away, so hopefully everyone will get a shot.

So, what are you waiting for? Get clicking! We'll make the first one easy!

[Update: OK gang, it looks like all of them were found. Congrats to those who got all up on it.]

It's eight minutes footage of next month's Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2! Alright, alright, it's not the entire map pack, but it does feature the Russian trainyard themed, "Corrosion," as well as "Sub Pens," a map based in a submarine pen.

Sure, we'd love to see video of the purported "hell hounds" coming to "Shi No Numa," the Nazi zombie infested part of the DLC, but wouldn't everyone? We're just going to have to wait until some more video hits the webs from WaW developer, Treyarch. For the whole schebang, hit the break and have a ball!

Update: The YouTube video after the break has been replaced by a couple of GameSpy videos. Check out all their Map Pack 2 videos right here.

[Thanks, John H.!]

Activision just sent word that the multiplayer map DLC for Call of Duty: World at War (otherwise known as Map Pack 1) has surpassed a combined worldwide download milestone of 2 million units across the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Needless to say, Activision seems pleased ... and why wouldn't it be? Map Pack 1 already broke Xbox Live sales records, selling one million units in its first week of availability.

Treyarch studio head, Mark Lamia, took a moment to comment on the "milestone," thanking the loyal community of World at War players for supporting the game -- and presumably, for not being completely tired of World War II themed shooters. Lamia also reminds gamers the World at War team expects to deliver new DLC sometime this June.

Activision just sent us new Call of Duty: World at War assets for the upcoming Map Pack 1 downloadable content, seeing that its release has been confirmed for March 19.

Conveniently galleried below are screenshots from the DLC's three new multiplayer maps (Knee Deep, Nightfire and Station) as well as a couple screenshots from the zombie-infested Verrückt map. Because screenshots just don't do the zombie map justice, there's a gruesome new trailer embedded after the break.

If it weren't for the abundance of soldiers and the obvious World at War branding, we'd think we were watching a scene from Left 4 Dead.

After giving into our mild case of insomnia and mindlessly surfing the internet at 3 am, we stumbled across Xbox.com's Game with Fame page and found March to be full of events. Several bands, including Mastodon, Thursday and Pearl Jam's Matt Cameron, will all be gaming it up this month.

Click the links below to learn more about each of the Xbox Live Game with Fame events and add the appropriate Gamertags to your friends list, if you must. Now, it's time for us to go to bed ...

• March 19 - Mastodon plays F.E.A.R. 2
• March 21 - Thursday plays CoD: WaW
• March 25 - Jamey Johnson plays NASCAR '09
• March 27 - Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam) plays Rock Band 2

Have you heard about this game called Call of Duty: World at War? It's some sort of new army experience developed by Treyarch, where you kill other army people using guns. Pretty crazy, right? Well, there's a 932MB World at War demo, featuring both single-player and four-player online co-op, available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace right now..

Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. Does a multi-million selling game really need to release a demo after all this time? Don't tell us you haven't bought it yet!

[Via Major Nelson]

In celebration of last week's Makin Map DLC release, Call of Duty: World at War soldiers will receive double XP all weekend long. From Friday through the early morning hours of Monday, March 12, double XP will be enabled on all gaming platforms including PS3 and Xbox 360. Twice the experience points is an added incentive to get online over the weekend, though we doubt hardcore World at War gamers really need convincing. It's still a nice gesture, though, Treyarch.