Blizzard’s MMO juggernaut “World of Warcraft”
is showing no signs of slowing down.
The company announced Monday that the game’s latest expansion – “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” – had sold 4.7 million copies worldwide in just one month. That makes it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, displacing “Wrath of the Lich King,” the previous “WoW” expansion.
Activision’s “Call of Duty” franchise continues to 
set new bars in the entertainment industry. The latest installment in the series — subtitled “Black Ops” — has hit $1 billion in sales in just six weeks. The only other entertainment property to reach that milestone so quickly, according to the publisher, was James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
Like its predecessor, “Black Ops” came out of the gate strong. In its first five days on shelves, the game had sales of $650 million. It hit the $1 billion mark nearly a month quicker than “Modern Warfare 2,” and now stands poised to assume the crown of the top-grossing videogame of all time.
Any lingering fears about “Call of Duty: Black Ops” being 
overshadowed by its predecessor can now be dismissed—Activision-Blizzard announced Tuesday that the latest installment in the series has topped $1 billion in worldwide sales.
That’s nearly a month faster than “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” hit the milestone, and it indicates the publisher could be on track to once again set entertainment and video game industry records.
Activision’s “Call of Duty” machine is showing no signs of weakness.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops” has hit $1 billion in sales in just six weeks, the company announced today. And the user engagement numbers are somehow even more impressive.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
The latest expansion to Activision 
Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” franchise has sold more copies in 24 hours than many games sell throughout the course of their lives.
More than 3.3 million people around the world bought “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” in its first day of availability — making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, according to the publisher.
Activision has done something no 
other publisher has been able to do this year – pull the video game industry out of its retail sales slump for the second consecutive month.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops” led the industry to an impressive 9 percent gain over the 2009 retail sales numbers. Add in hardware, Kinect and the rest of the assorted offerings and the gaming industry made $2.95 billion last month, according to The NPD Group. That’s the best November on record.
Last November, Activision’s annual “Call of Duty” release ruled the sales charts in a dominant fashion. This year, the story is set to repeat itself.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops” could lead the video game industry to its second consecutive month of year-over-year retail sales gains. If so, that will be the first time this year the sector has managed to pull off that feat.
[As Cataclysm reboots many areas in World Of Warcraft‘s universe, Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris talks to Blizzard co-founder 
and EVP Frank Pearce about why the early grind in WoW “doesn’t have the best content”, and how the expansion is fixing that.]
Blizzard has always been a collection of perfectionists. But it wasn’t until the impending release of its MMO expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm that we saw just how exacting they can be when it come to quality.
The rise of Deathwing the Destroyer in Azeroth, as you surely know by now, isn’t confined to the expansion pack. His eruption from Deepholm has ripped the entire game world asunder – even impacting what new players of the game see and experience.
Gamasutra’s Chris Morris talks to Eric Hirshberg, 
CEO of Activision about why, despite a stronger opening week, the company predicts total sales of Call of Duty: Black Op will fall below those of last year’s Modern Warfare 2.
As Treyarch and Activision’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops continues to smash entertainment industry records, analysts who cover Activision are scrambling to up their year-end sales predictions. At the publisher, though, things haven’t changed.
Despite the fact that Black Ops sales are tracking 18 percent ahead of where Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 was at this point it its life cycle, Activision is still officially estimating that the game’s performance will fall just short of last year’s sales totals.
Activision’s latest “Call of Duty” game continues to set records for the company. The video game publisher announced Thursday that in its first five days on store shelves, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has generated sales of $650 million.
That’s $100 million better than last year’s “Modern Warfare 2,” which set a new bar for the video game industry — as well as the entertainment industry at large. Activision claims the opening is the biggest ever for any movie, book or video game.
Chris Morris: Journalist 