“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]

GameStop announced today that it would hold the “world’s largest” Modern Warfare 2 tournament kicking off November 20 both online and at 2900+ US GameStop locations. I wonder if the fact that it’s the world’s only Modern Warfare 2 tournament makes it the world’s largest…?

There are actually three different tourneys. The first is the US-only Xbox 360 one-on-one tourney where Round 1 takes place in-store, Round 2 takes it to Xbox Live and the finals go down in some as-yet undecided location — grand prize is $US5000. Then there are the International four-on-four tourneys for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, which you can find at gamebattles.com/gamestop. The top four teams from each platform will go to the finals to duke it out for a $US10,000 grand prize.

Get more details here.

Image Cred

“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]

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]

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]

Here’s just a small selection. There’s more at the link below.

Your Hilarious and Amazing Modern Warfare 2 Easter Eggs [Gizmodo]

More than 2.2 gamers logged more than 5.2 million multiplayer hours playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the first day alone, a new one-day Xbox Live record. Those gamers managed to unlock more than 11 million achievements in that day as well.

Pretty crazy.

If you missed Luke’s excellent article comparing Modern Warfare 2 to other entertainment properties, you should go have a read. Today Activision says that their game pulled in an estimated $US550 million in its first five days.

That’s compared to:

The largest reported five-day opening worldwide box office gross figures, held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($394 million)

The largest reported five-day opening domestic box office gross figures, held by The Dark Knight ($203.8 million)

The largest reported five-day worldwide video game sales record, previously held by Grand Theft Auto IV (six million units, $US500 million)

The largest reported opening first-day domestic box office gross figures, held by The Dark Knight ($66.4 million)

The largest reported first-day book sales in dollars, held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ($220 million)

The largest reported first-day worldwide video game sales record, previously held by Grand Theft Auto IV (3.6 million units, $US310 million)

Pretty impressive.

The “No Russian” scene in Modern Warfare 2 has players working undercover with a terrorist organisation as they open fire on the crowd at a Russian airport. In most versions of the game this scene is skippable, but it doesn’t appear at all in the Russian PC version of the game. Speaking to Eurogamer, an Activision representative explains why.

“Other countries have formal ratings boards that we regularly work with. However, Russia does not have a formal ratings entity. As a result, we chose to block the scene after seeking the advice of local counsel,”

Probably a wise move on Activision’s part. In the same statement, the company also addressed rumours that the console versions of Modern Warfare 2 were being pulled from Russian shelves in order to remove the scene, explaining that no console versions of the game have been released in the country.

Activision chose to censor Russian MW2 [Eurogamer]

So Infinity Ward ditched dedicated servers for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2, eh? It’s of little consequence, as it hasn’t taken hackers long to enable a workaround, bringing the feature back.

And here it is, in action. Whether it’s actually better than IW’s present solution is another matter, but really, that was never the point here. No, the point was just to show IW’s decision could be reversed, and that point has been made.

Here’s the quote, which That VideoGame Blog attributes to audio of the event:

I did in the last game a voice for a character called Gaz and in this game I’m now voicing a guy called Ghost, who now just got a spin-off comic of his own and they’re talking about another little game to go with it. So, I’m quite excited about it. It’s grown and grown and grown.

Destructoid notes the context in which this was mentioned – “another little game to go with” a spinoff comic – means it could be just a flash game to coincide with the book’s launch (which coincided with the game’s Nov. 10 release). That’s a pretty reasonable take, although I’ve asked Robert Bowling if he or Infinity Ward would like to say any more.

Modern Warfare 2’s Ghost Getting His Own Game? [That VideoGame Blog via Destructoid]