When I was growing up, never would I of though that the word billion would be used when talking about video game sales. But, nonetheless, here we are. That said, as much as I hate the management over at Activision, Activision’s Call of Duty series has ranked in a total of $3 Billion in retail sales worldwide, according to The NPD Group, Charttrack, GfK and internal Activision estimates.

“Call Of Duty has become one of the greatest entertainment franchises of all time. If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history,” said Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick.

It’s obvious that Activision and Kotick have struck gold; alot of it. However, knowing Activision, we can expect more from the Call of Duty series.

At the DICE ‘09 conference, John Riccitiello told the attendees at the conference that the current recession has been ‘a blessing in disguise [so that] we can clear away junk’. Stating that the overall goal from this is that the developers can ’stop sending pointless product to retail stores’. ‘Junk is hard to compete with,’ said Riccitiello. He felt that developers should shift their focus on quality and away from quantity.

‘We did get fat in too many places. It seemed like anyone who could draw a guy with a gun with a crayon could get funded. At least for EA, we got a little too fat, and a little too reliant on where things were,’ he continues. ‘I’m not pro-recession but to quote Rahm Emanuel: never waste a crisis.’

This is a great wake up call for developers atleast they can wake up before it  became too late.

We have all seen some people do some very “not smart” things over the holidays, but this is one story that takes the cake.

Apparently, NeoGAF member, HUELEN10, convinced some neighbors, of whom he is casually with, to buy a Nintedo Wii for there kids for Christmas, but what they didn’t know was how to buy things off the systems Virtual Market.

The parents that are unfamiliar with consoles were given a suggestion of a few retail games as well as the Sega Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. And when asked how to buy the game off the system HUELEN10 said, “put in [the] credit card when prompted on the Shop Channel, and get the amount of points [you need]”

And sadly she did. Right into the disc slot. And when one didn’t work, she went ahead and jammed two more credit cards into the console. Seems logical right.

Sometime later, the mother called her neighbor, furious that their new Wii had been broken by following his advice.