Activision Blizzard had one mission in mind when launching "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:" To make the videogame the largest entertainment launch in history.

After only one day of sales, the heavily hyped military actioner seems to be closing in on its target, with an estimated 4.7 million units sold in the U.S. and the U.K. alone, generating $310 million for the gamemaker.

Read the restComparably, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the top pic of the year at the box office and on DVD, opened with $220 million in its first weekend, and sold 7.5 million DVD and Blu-rays, in its first week. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" still has the top opening weekend of any pic to date with a $394 million worldwide haul.

The strong performance for "Modern Warfare 2," released Tuesday, should provide the videogame industry with a much needed boost as it heads into the holiday season, given that the overall biz is down for the year. October sales figures will be announced later today.

The games biz likes to set benchmarks to beat, and Activision's very vocal topper Bobby Kotick had spent months touting the potential for "Modern Warefare 2" to topple previous records not just for a game, but "any media."

Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto IV" had broken previous industry records when it bowed in 2008, selling 3.7 million units on its first day, and generating more than $500 million in revenue by the end of its first week, from 6 million units sold worldwide.

Before that, Microsoft's "Halo 3" had set the number to beat in 2007 with 3.3 million units in 24 hours and $300 million in its first week.

While many of Activision's sales were generated in the U.S., with millions of pre-sales contributing to that figure, "Modern Warfare 2" also sold briskly overseas.

In the U.K., for example, the game moved more than 1.2 million units in its first day, twice the 631,000 units that "Grand Theft Auto IV" sold.

The previous installment of "Call of Duty" sold 13 million units in 2007.

Analysts had predicted "Modern Warfare 2" to sell nearly 12 million units during all of October through December.

Source

Still unsure if you want to own a copy of this game? Check out Krosan's news post here which includes links to numerous reviews of the game.

The World Cyber Games 2009 is live from Chengdu, China. The WCG compiles the best gamers from around the world and has them compete for some of the biggest prizepurses in eSports, any progamer will admit - WCG is the prize to win.

In Warcraft the biggest names are in attendance and the scene was shocked as yAws took down two time WCG champion Sky yesterday evening. Also in attendance are the big community names such as Grubby & Moon along with a vast number of other top players.

In CounterStrike the star studded lineup includes features the likes of Fnatic, mTw, EG, mouz and many more and regularly delivers phenominal matches in the knockout stages.

There are also the other WCG Games and tournaments including FIFA09 & Starcraft. You can follow the event on either The WCG Site or you can follow it on QuadV - The event is GMT +8 - so matches take place in the European morning/early afternoon.

Today Modern Warfare 2 officially launched world-wide.

You can read up on reviews here:

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/104/1043552p1.html
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/10/review-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/11/10/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-review-200-hours-down-the-tubes/
http://www.gamearena.com.au/pc/games/title/modern-warfare-2/reviews.php?id=5033868
http://tweakers.net/reviews/1441/1/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-singleplayer-hype.html (Dutch & SP only)
http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/d1/modern-warfare-2-52c0d1.html
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/callofdutymodernwarefare2/review.html
http://cheatcc.com/pc/rev/callofdutymodernwarfare2review2.html
http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/158267.Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-2/reviews/134131.Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-2/
http://www.gamearena.com.au/pc/games/title/modern-warfare-2/reviews.php?id=5033868

The American eSports scene is to many a graveyard of eSports founding fathers, names like the CPL & WSVG cloud the one succcess story that estimates it will make $50 million revenue from marketing alone this coming year. That is of course the MLG, who hosted their latest tournament this past weekend in Anaheim (which ButtonBashers won!!).

Quote

The four-year-old company will generate about $50 million in revenue this year from sponsorships, and face-to-face and online tournaments that broadcast live online in high definition (HD), according to Matthew Bromberg, the company's president and CEO.

Most of the revenue comes from online competitions -- about 500,000 monthly, many sponsor-supported. "Revenue has more than doubled from last year to this year, and it will more than double again next year," he says -- adding that 75% of revenue comes from sponsorship, with the remainder from licensing agreements.

Read the full article Here

With only one day to go before we can all enjoy our (pirated?) copy of Modern Warfare 2, the next instalment of the Call of Duty series, the anticipation can't be more extensive.

Retailer Gamestop purposely broke the November 10th street date this weekend, which means a whole lot US citizens are able to buy the game before the official release date, resulting in Modern Warfare 2 footage has spawning all over the internet.

In what has been a busy week for celsus with the announcement of them venturing back into the cod4 scene they have decided to announce another cod4 lineup. Formerly known as mLPF.

An all finnish lineup that has a core lineup with achievements such as :
The eXperience LAN Roskilde Denmark 7/8
Solid Vaultparty Finland 2nd
Summer Assembly LAN Finland 3rd

and various online achievements such as:
top8 in yoyotech cup
top16 h2k.tt challenge

Crossfire is proud to give everyone another opporturnity to grap one out of 25 keys over the next week. With a little work or a little luck you will have numerous chances to get one of those.

This weekend some of the best Czech Enemy Territory teams and players moved over to the Digitex 2009 exhibition to take part in the World Gamemaster Tournament LAN finals to showcase Enemy Territory as a game, its teamplay and atmosphere. Driving force and initiator has been TeamPlay Radio shoutcaster smOke together with the help of Intel and Asus who made WGT happen. Of course smOke has also been on stage giving the audience the chance to follow action packed Enemy Territory live combined with an excellent shoutcast.

Another cheatsite & their customers bite the dust. ///PALE's so called "unhackable" & "untraceable" customer information has been brought to the light. Below are the list of PaleHook Customer which bought the private bot.


Crossfire.nu E-Mail Matches (Thanks to Krosan)

The Early Xmas RTCW Cup is about to start - with so far 24 signups it is the biggest RTCWCup this year. Officially the signups are now closed but exceptions are possible so feel free to pm me on irc. The teams are the following: