September 6th, 2012

Welcome To The Game: Amazon’s Working With Activision On In-App Offers

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During today’s Amazon Kindle Extravaganza, one of the slides that was popped up during the event got the attention of quite a few of us. It was a slide showing an in-app offer on a Kindle device.

It’s an interesting play for Amazon, as it grows itself beyond just an “e-reader”. → Read More

August 2nd, 2012

Activision Q2 Surprises The Street Again On $1.08B Revenue And $0.16 EPS, Raises Outlook

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Activision Blizzard announced its second quarter results today, beating estimates with net revenues at $1.08 billion, compared to $1.15 billion for the second quarter last year. Meanwhile, net revenue from digital channels came in at $343 million and represented 32 percent of the company’s total revenues, up from a 27 percent-share last quarter. Earnings per share came in at $0.16, compared to… → Read More

August 18th, 2011

Activision: Social Game Company Valuations “Out Of Whack”

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With skyrocketing valuation numbers for upstart tech companies, it’s not just naysayer pundits crying “bubble.” Activision (Activision-Blizzard, to be precise) is skeptical of the numbers being put forth for competitors like Zynga and Rovio, whose billion or multiple billion dollar valuations put them out of reach for easy acquisition. Perhaps they’re hoping to pick them up for a song after the… → Read More

July 22nd, 2011

Activision CEO Spills The Beans: Guitar Hero Isn’t Dead, Just Resting

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As a barely 23-year-old, my deepest connection to most classic Rock songs is through a PlayStation game. My favorite PlayStation game. You may have heard of it — it’s called Guitar Hero. So when Activision said that it was calling it quits on Guitar Hero, I found myself humming: “lay your weary head to rest, don’t you cry no more.” Ok, maybe I exaggerate. But it was a sad, sad day… → Read More

April 12th, 2011

Activision: Guitar Hero Not Dead, Merely Placed On Hiatus

Activision now says that Guitar Hero hasn’t been outright cancelled, but merely placed on hiatus. The publisher had said in February that it was going to disband the Guitar Hero business unit, and that the 2011 edition of the game had been cancelled. What gives? → Read More

February 28th, 2011

False Alarm: Activision Calls Modern Warfare Teaser ‘Hoax’

We regret to inform you that the Modern Warfare 3 “teaser” from the other day was, in fact, nothing of the sort. You can almost hear the angels crying. → Read More

February 11th, 2011

Analyst: Prepare Yourselves For A Pay-To-Play Call Of Duty

Now here’s a rumor that will stop many people in their tracks. An analyst at Wedbush Securities, “one of the largest securities firms and investment banks in the nation,” says that he’s “certain to [his] core” that Activision is planning a pay-to-play Call of Duty. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of millions of gamers around the country flipping out. Picture an anime… → Read More

February 10th, 2011

Guitar Hero Didn't Die A Natural Death, But Was Killed By Myopic Greed

Kudos to Activision for doing exactly what so many people had been predicting for years now. The world’s biggest video game publisher said yesterday that it was going to “disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit,” citing a decline in interest in the music game genre. And what could possibly be the reason for that, hmm? Maybe releasing sequel after sequels after sequel in such… → Read More

February 9th, 2011

Activision Discontinues Guitar Hero And True Crime Franchises

Sad news today. Looks like the music genre doesn’t have room for two (or is it three? four?) overpriced DLC machines. To be sure, Guitar Hero has sold a lot of copies, but you’re not going to get a lot of return business when people have already spent three times the normal amount on your game. Plus, it’s a copyright nightmare, and probably very expensive to produce. → Read More

January 5th, 2011

Walker Digital Sues Zynga, Activision Blizzard Over Gaming Patent

Walker Digital, the “invention company” founded by Priceline.com co-inventor Jay S. Walker, isn’t just suing Facebook, he’s also trying to take on some giant game publishers.

More specifically, Walker Digital has just filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Zynga, Activision and the latter’s subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment. → Read More

December 22nd, 2010

Activision Adds EA To Its $400 Million Infinity Ward Lawsuit

Tis the season to be suing the pants off your nearest rivals. Activision’s lawsuit against former Infinity Ward gents Jason West and Vince Zampella has expanded to include—you guessed it!—EA. Activision claims that EA “set out to destabilize, disrupt and to attempt to destroy Infinity Ward.” Ooh! West and Zampella left Infinity Ward earlier this year, and have since formed a… → Read More

November 18th, 2010

Billions And Billions Served: Call Of Duty Black Ops Makes $650m In First Five Days

Yeah, we know, Activision. Call of Duty: Black Ops made a lot of money. It should, being that’s it’s $60 a pop. But just because McDonalds has “billions and billions” served doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to partake. → Read More

November 17th, 2010

No Buys: Big Video Game Franchises Stink Up The Joint In October

Man, October was a pretty bad month for video game sales, particularly those published by the big guns. Medal of Honor, EA’s modern day reboot of the series, sold a little more than 1 million copies. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, 1 million copies sold, but the expectation was for closer to 1.5 million copies sold. Perhaps people saw that the game was just OK: nothing stellar but nothing to… → Read More

November 12th, 2010

Shocker: Bungie's Activision Game Will Have A PC Port

Activision: a company! A company with presentations, presentations that contain slides. One recent slide, seen here, suggests that Bungie’s “New Title”—you’ll recall that Bungie inked a deal with Activision some months ago—will come out not only for the usual consoles, but also for the PC. How about that? → Read More

November 11th, 2010

Fat Cash: Call Of Duty: Black Ops Makes $360M Its First Day, Activision Say It's Biggest Launch In Entertainment History

As a caller on Ron & Fez reminded us a little while ago, Call of Duty: Black Ops (also known as BLOPS) had the biggest entertainment launch in history, taking in some $360 million in first-day sales. But as we all know, that’s a reasonably misleading statement. How do you compare “entertainment launches” across different entertainment, um, sectors? Let’s take movies. If one person buys… → Read More

November 10th, 2010

Surprise! Game-Breaking Problems Mar PC Launch Of Call Of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops launched to great fanfare yesterday, but, at least on the PC side of things, it hasn’t exactly been a flawless launch. Users are filling up message boards from here to somewhere else with complaints of all shapes and sizes, from stuttering frame rates to unplayably laggy multi-player sessions. And keep in mind that the game is based on the 11-year-old id Tech 3 (Quake 3)… → Read More

November 9th, 2010

Call Of Duty: Black Ops: The ‘Pinnacle Of The Linear Military Shooter Experience’

The Guardian says that Call of Duty: Black Ops has “easily the most cogent and well-constructed story we’ve seen from the Call of Duty franchise in a number of years.” Could it be, gasp, that the single-player mode is actually worth a damn this time around? → Read More

October 14th, 2010

Will Call Of Duty Black Ops Be The Biggest Game Ever?

And it would have done so fairly quietly, given that EA’s Medal of Honor had gotten much more heat in the past few months. Was that good heat or bad heat? Who knows. But what we do know is that people are pre-ordering Black Ops like crazy, so much so that HMV, a big retailer over in the UK, says that it has “every chance of being the biggest game release ever.” Well! One of HMV’s… → Read More

September 10th, 2010

Shock: Treyarch To Support Call Of Duty: Black Ops So Much That You'll Never Want To Trade It In

How best to battle the scourge of trading in your used videos games? (Remember: video game publishers scream bloody murder when you buy a used video game.) Credit to Treyarch, the developers of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops, for doing something novel. Rather than use the stick, as EA does with its Project Ten Dollar, Treyarch will use the carrot. That’s right: they’ll make you want to keep… → Read More

August 24th, 2010

Who Saw This Coming? Call Of Duty: Black Ops To Ship With PC Mod Tools

An olive branch to PC gamers, and from Activision of all people? It would appear that the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops will ship with honest-to-goodness mod tools. This is a most unexpected development. → Read More

August 12th, 2010

$150 Special Edition Of Call Of Duty: Black Ops Comes With Remote Control Car

There will be at least two special editions of Call of Duty: Black Ops. There’s the Hardened Edition and the Prestige Edition, the Prestige being the fancier of the two. But let’s start with the Hardened Edition. → Read More

August 2nd, 2010

DLC Is Here To Stay: 20 Million Call Of Duty Map Packs Sold

If anyone wants to know where to find me, I’ll be in my cave, banging two rocks together. That seems to be the only place for me, since I can’t seem to wrap my head around DLC as a good thing — yet millions have decided to shell out, just recently passing the 20,000,000 sold mark for the Call Of Duty franchise. Congratulations all around, I guess, as they have clearly put out a… → Read More

July 23rd, 2010

Call of Duty may go subscription according to analysts

Oh the irony. For years, players of games like Medal of Honor, Halo, and Call of Duty have made fun of MMORPG players because of the recurring subscription requirement. If analyst predictions are correct, however, they may soon be eating their words. → Read More

July 16th, 2010

Activision has sunk $100 million into StarCraft II

One hundred million dollars. That’s quite a lot of money. If you factor in advertising, you’re looking at what is perhaps the most expensive game ever made. It’s not a chump bet, though: the insane popularity of StarCraft means that they can expect a huge return on their investment, to be paid back over what will certainly be a long, long shelf life for this game. Activision may… → Read More

June 24th, 2010

Activision is a scaredy-cat, won't support Move or Kinect

Bad news for Activision fans that were hoping to use the Move or Kinect; the publisher is convinced that the high prices for the new peripherals are going to prevent people from adopting the new technology. So don’t expect to see Call of Duty or Guitar Hero using Move or Kinect any time soon. → Read More

May 7th, 2010

Whew! Infinity Ward will create another Call of Duty game

Infinity Ward will, indeed, create another Call of Duty game. Activision confirmed this during the company’s first-quarter conference call. I guess we can all sleep easy tonight. → Read More

May 3rd, 2010

Video: What to make of the Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer?

Surely by now you’ve seen the first teaser trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops. What do you think? → Read More

April 30th, 2010

Call of Duty: Black Ops accidentally (?) announced: The most intense shooter since that other one

The next Call of Duty game will not be about saving Infinity Ward employees from Activision. I’m a little disappointed. → Read More

April 29th, 2010

Bungie signs 10-year deal with Activision (cue explosion sounds)

Infinity Ward? What’s that? Activision just snagged Bungie, of Halo fame, to a ten-year deal. Silver lining: the Sun will run out of hydrogen in about 5 billion years. → Read More

April 22nd, 2010

Is 3 Call of Duty games in less than 2 years overkill? If not, it's awfully close.

Simply amazing. Just totally, out-of-this-world amazing. Activision is said to be working on no less than three new Call of Duty games, to be released before 2012. That’s three games in less than two years. You’d think that Activision learned its lesson with Guitar Hero. Remember when Guitar Hero was white-hot in 2007? The game was everywhere! Now? Is there anybody left on the planet who has any… → Read More