“The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has actually outsold the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in its first week”, IW’s Robert Bowling posted on the company’s message boards. “Making it the most successful PC version.”

The quote was made in response to claims that the PC version of the game accounts for only 3 per cent of MW2’s total sales, Bowling adding “Essentially, all this percentage proves is that the console versions sold great, not that the PC version sold poorly”.

3% of overall sales [Infinity Ward]

A poster in Valve’s official forums complained that a key he bought through G2Play.net no longer lets him open and play the game. A Valve representative, BurtonJ, called such sales “illegitimate” and confirmed the ban. He recommends buying a full version of the game — maybe through Steam? Hint hint.

VE3D, which spotted the thread, points out that calling the key sales “illegitimate” is not entirely true. The keys are typically sold legally in Asia and other territories and while game makers try to ban it, their ability to do so is not absolute. Of course, the interest is clear: The keys being sold cost less than the full game, and both publisher and digital distributor want to protect their bottom lines.

Valve’s only advice to grey-market key buyers is ask for a refund and get a “legitimate” copy of the game.

Valve Banning Grey-Import Modern Warfare 2 CD Keys [VE3D]

Jurassic: The Hunted, developed by Cauldron HQ and released two weeks after it was announced on the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PS2, is a budget first-person shooter involving weapons and survival expert Craig Dylan, trapped on an island inhabited by dinosaurs. The screenshots looked nice enough, but there’s just something about a game going from official announcement to release in under a month that doesn’t generate confidence. Now releasing a demo, on the other hand, either speaks of Activision’s confidence in the title, or its hope that the few people who would enjoy this sort of thing realise it exists. One of those.

The Jurassic: The Hunted demo is now available to Gold Xbox Live members in the US.

“In the beginning we talked about having things in Modern Warfare 2 like outbreaks, viruses, chemical warfare, and even outlandish things such as aliens and the living dead” says Jesse Stern, one of Modern Warfare 2’s writers.

“We worked our way through it before we finally ended up with a more grounded version of the real world as it’s depicted in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And as we were kicking around scenarios for conflict, we kept stumbling into things that were happening in real life, which was honestly unintentional.”

The living dead? Where have we seen that before in a Call of Duty game…

The above quote was pulled from a longer interview over at GamePro. If you want to read more serious, thoughtful words from a man responsible for Russian paratroopers in a burger store in Virginia, hit the link below.

Modern Warfare 2 writer: “the airport level was a risk we had to take” [GamePro]

Not only is it informative, giving curious Tony Hawk Ride investors a 20-plus minute video preview of the game, Jeff Gerstmann fans get a crystal clear look at the man’s choice in footwear. The Giant Bomb gang push the Ride board to its technical limits, make accurate comparisons to Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam, help explain the difference between “casual” and “competent” skating, and illustrate just how well the sensor-laden board works in the real world.

Do still around for the exciting conclusion, which totally shreds! You will believe a Gerstmann can fly.

Quick Look: Tony Hawk RIDE [Giant Bomb]

And they are. An LA Times report on the game’s launch says the game “cost $US40 million to $US50 million to produce”. That’s, uh, a lot. Gran Turismo 5 has cost $US60 million so far, but that game’s been in development for five years, not the two it took to get MW2 out the door.

So, yes, if you were wondering how Activision got so much detail, Fiddy and Keith David into the game, that’s how they did it. By throwing money at it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 video game gets Hollywood-scale launch [LA Times]

No, not the video game character. We’re still pretty good at discerning reality from fantasy. The voice of “Soap” in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, actor Kevin McKidd, tells the New York Post that “there are talks of a feature film” based on the franchise. Which is hardly concrete, but backs up previous speculation that, yes, a Call of Duty movie is happening.

It’s not really a question of if, but when, especially if Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward has more time on its hands to dedicate to side projects.

Exclusive: ‘Rome’ & ‘Call of Duty’ movies on! [NY Post]

The single-player experience in the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game is largely the same, with a few obvious differences. There’s the controller layout of course, and being a PC gamer long before I was a console gamer I will always be much more comfortable with a keyboard and trackball mouse than I ever will be with a standard Xbox 360 controller. I could argue that it allows for better accuracy, but it seems to me at least that the hit boxes are skewed more towards console gamers in the PC version, meaning that accuracy isn’t as important as it is in more PC-centric titles.

The graphics seem a tad bit sharper on my PC, but that could just as well be a factor of the clarity of my monitors and the fact that my current gaming rig — an Intel Core i7 2.6GHz with 6GB of RAM and dual GeForce GTX 275s — is a bit beefier than what I’m used to playing on. It really isn’t a huge difference, however, so I wouldn’t call either side the winning one graphically.

Basically, as far as single player is concerned, the games are relatively similar. Which brings us to the multiplayer side of things.

The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has of course gotten a great deal of flack from the PC community for imposing console player-limits and removing the ability to create dedicated servers for online multiplayer, a feature that’s been standard in previous games in the series.

This having been said, the PC version loses a point to the Xbox 360 as far as local multiplayer options go, with the ability to network multiple 360 consoles together via System Link. There are no LAN options for Modern Warfare 2, and of course no split-screen multiplayer either, so the console is coming out on top so far.

Aside from the LAN options and a few smaller details, such as PC text chat, that’s where the differences end, which I suppose is why many PC gamers are incensed. The PC version features the same, network-controlled matchmaking system as the Xbox 360 version, without any of the advanced controls that PC players are used to. You can still set up a private game and tweak options like number of lives and friendly-fire, but for the most part it’s click, join and go.

As for reports of the PC version being open to cheaters and hackers, I’ve yet to see an instance of obvious cheating in my brief time on Steam, though in all fairness I do spend an awful lot of time dying.

As a PC gamer myself, I find the lack of dedicated servers to be frustrating, but then I am also a console gamer, so this is the sort of thing I’ve gotten used to over the past few years. When all is said and done, it’s a matter of personal perception whether the system is inferior or not. Should you feel slighted for getting what is essentially the same thing on both platforms? That’s completely up to you.

Keep in mind that I’m not the most dedicated or skilled Modern Warfare 2 player by a long shot, and your personal experiences with the two different versions may vary. If they do, they ball all means, tell us.

While the news outlet doesn’t name the studio responsible for providing gamers with even more of the Call of Duty that they clearly crave, having a third team dedicated to pumping out future iterations could mean any number of things.

One possibility could give current Call of Duty developers Treyarch and Infinity Ward more time to produce entries in the core series, offering them a three year development cycle instead of the two year turnaround time in place now. Another is semi-annual releases, which may be pushing it.

Or, this third team could be focused on a different Call of Duty model. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has publicly expressed this thoughts on a massively multiplayer online take on the series. Activision CFO Tom Tippl has also teased “additional online monetisation models” for the Call of Duty brand.

Activision already has a handful of other developers working on Call of Duty content, including Nintendo DS developer n-Space, responsible for three portable entries, and multiplayer map specialists Certain Affinity, who helped Treyarch out with Call of Duty: World At War.

Or perhaps Activision has its newest studio, the recently announced Sledgehammer Games at work on a Call of Duty title. The ex-Dead Space developers could take the franchise in a more futuristic direction, if they dare.

We’ve reached out to Activision to see if they’d like to comment on the LA Times report, but have not yet heard back.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 video game gets Hollywood-scale launch [LA Times]

This dog obviously has had more time to play Tony Hawk: Ride than three hours on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m going to assume you’ve all seen at least one skateboarding dog video in your lifetimes. If not, welcome to the internet. This rather obvious viral ad for Tony Hawk: Ride plays off the skateboarding dog phenomenon, starting off slightly plausible before building up to completely ridiculous.