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.

Plastic guitars, used in the popular Guitar Hero titles, are Activision‘s hammer in its crusade as ” the most successful game publisher on the planet”. However, with Guitar Hero sales on a recent decline, the next step is to ditch consoles and their licensing fees altogether.

During a Q&A session at Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference, Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard CEO, said that Activision is now exploring the option of selling Guitar Hero and games of its kind as plug-in-and-play products.

“I think what the untethered ‘Guitar Hero’ does is it maybe equals the playing field a little bit more and gives you leverage with first parties on downloadable content and the business model,” said Kotick. “You should expect to see many of our products to be playable on the television independent of a console.”

There’s innovative, and then there’s craziness. And I think that Bobby Kotick may have just crossed the line between the two because this would be a bad move on Activision’s part.

[Activision’s ‘Guitar Hero’ and Others May Ditch Consoles via MTV]

Activision’s head of state, Bobby Kotick has been on a recent high, saying that Activision may need to “stop supporting Sony” come 2010 or 2011 because “the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and [that doesn't] make it easy for [them] to support the platform.” But, that hasn’t seem to faze Sony’s solid stature.

“PlayStation has tremendous momentum coming out of E3, and we are seeing positive growth with more than 350 titles slated to hit across all our platforms, including many anticipated games from our publishing partners,” said Playstation spokesman Patrick Seybold when speaking with Kotaku.

“We enjoy healthy business relationships with and greatly value our publishing partners and are working closely with them to deliver the best entertainment experience.”

Now, the statements made by both sides are very understandable, but like Seybold stated, coming out of E3 Sony has a solid line-up excluding Activision’s upcoming titles. Anyway, lets just hope that Activision doesn’t go ahead with their remark.

Update: It has been brought to my attention that there was a little error within the title. However, it has now been edited.

Original: That’s right. According to The Hollwood Reporter, it seems that Activision have set up deals for “Call of Duty: The Movie”, the movie for the very popular video game.

“[The Call of Duty movie is] being talked about for the big screen,” said one person with knowledge of the deal.

However, in an interview prior to Thursday’s quarterly earnings conference call, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick wouldn’t comment on the status of Call of Duty becoming a film.

Kotick added that video games, especially family-friendly titles – like Guitar Hero, which will be getting its own show - are “capturing leisure time away from TV and film.”

Evidence that Kotick might be correct was in the company’s financial report on Thursday. Revealing that Activision Blizzard’s first-quarter revenue had more than tripled to $981 million as net income swelled to $189 million from $43 million in the year-ago quarter.