duties

The video game industry posted its best-ever November sales on the strength of Microsoft's Kinect motion controller and games like Call of Duty: Black Ops.

That was the report from industry analyst, The NPD Group, which puts out monthly tallies for total video game software and hardware sales. According to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, the video game business was good for $2.99 billion in November, up 8 percent from $2.76 billion a year earlier, and about $30 million more than the previous record November in 2008.

According to Frazier, every category of the business was up for … Read more

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said he has the recipe for beating the Call of Duty franchise. But, he says, it will take a couple years to achieve that goal.

Speaking in a recent interview with video game blog Kotaku, Riccitiello said that the key to beating Call of Duty is to "make a better game." Once that job is complete, Riccitiello told the gaming blog, his company will need to "make a better game again."

Citing Metacritic (which, like CNET, is owned by CBS), Riccitiello said that he'd like to see a first-person shooter … Read more

Call of Duty is one of the top multiplayer video games on the market. And Activision won't jeopardize that success by putting it behind a pay wall.

"Are we going to be charging for multiplayer? The answer is no," Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said to IndustryGamers in a recent interview. "The experience you have out of the box, connecting with the online community to play Call of Duty is absolutely integral to the experience, and we'll never charge for that."

Hirshberg's comments came after Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told IndustryGamers earlier this … Read more

Wilson's taking a day off to devote more time to early-morning photography, so Mark Licea sits in his seat to fill in. We received a handful of listener responses about yesterday's TSA scanner conversation, so we spend part of the first half clarifying our stance on the issue, but also discuss our typical Friday stories--Asians, vacations, video games, Apple, Kool-Aid, and paper airplanes just a few things you can expect to hear on today's show!

A 17-year-old geek bearing a striking resemblance to Wilson in middle school is getting heat from Apple after running a six-figure business out of his home selling white iPhone 4s. Six months ago, high school senior Fei Lam contacted Apple's Chinese supplier Foxconn and somehow convinced them to sell him white iPhone 4 parts.

He used those parts for Whiteiphonefournow.com, a site specializing in converting black iPhone 4s into the missing white version. After selling more than $130,000 worth of parts since, Lam just received a letter from a private investigator hired by Apple to investigate accusations of stolen goods, but there's no word yet from Apple about what they plan to do with the litigation. Another reason explaining Wilson's absence today!

Social networks are all fun and games until someone gets outed for digging Asian girls--that's the lesson of the week for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose old Friendster profile is making the rounds on the Internet for comments made about Asian females under the "What I Enjoy Doing" heading.

We'll grant Zuckerberg some slack since he was just a 19-year-old teenager at the time, and the rest of the content is equally lighthearted--he also lists "coding," "IN n Out," "bad life decisions," and "defeating nemeses" under the same category.

Our final story of the day comes from South America, where Brazilian Christians have banned the use of all USB connections and their associated products after claims that the logo for USB resembles the Satanic trident.

The Web is divided on the origin of the USB logo, but some suggest that the artist based the design on Neptune's Trident, with three shapes adorning the points that symbolize several connections to one destination.

Unfortunately, the ban on USB devices means that flash drives, mice, keyboards, and printers all fall under the same devil-worshiping umbrella, so hold onto your parallel port cords and PS/2 extensions--someday you might need them in Brazil.

Activision released sales figures yesterday that showed Black Ops, the latest release in the Call of Duty franchise, tallied over $650 million in revenue during the game's first five days of availability. That figure easily bested the previous record of $550 million set by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

But with two years of record-breaking launches under its belt, the onus is now on Activision to deliver high-quality and perhaps most importantly, fast-selling, titles each and every year. And no one understands that pressure better than Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, who heads up the Activision side of … Read more

All the news today was totally shocking: MySpace and Facebook having an announcement? Together? Stuxnet now the "biggest threat to industry" everywhere? National Unfriend day!? What!? Also, the scariest robot we've ever seen: Snakebot. Oh, and I have my own dirt track to nowhere in the UK. Suck on that, haters. --Molly

After enjoying record launch day sales, Call of Duty: Black Ops has now taken the five-day sales record crown.

Activision announced today that the latest release in the venerable franchise tallied over $650 million in worldwide revenue, according to internal figures, easily besting the previous record set by predecessor Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 of $550 million.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said that with the new mark, "Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for two consecutive years across all forms of entertainment."

The feat, Activision claimed in … Read more

If you notice your children becoming particularly sociopathic over the next few weeks and months, please consider that the reason might be Call of Duty: Black Ops.

I offer this important psychological advice as I have just been struck by the news that Cuba's finest independent media are so up in arms about the game that it seems they might even want to bear them.

What, you might wonder, could possible move the Cubans to be so upset? Well, it seems they are not entirely keen on the fact that the first mission of this extraordinarily well-reviewed game consists … Read more

And just like that, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's $310 million launch day revenue record has been shattered.

Activision announced today that Call of Duty: Black Ops, which launched on Tuesday, generated about $360 million in revenue during its first 24 hours of availability, according to the game company's internal estimates. The figure includes sales from North America and the U.K., Activision reported. The game company was quick to point out that Black Ops is now the "biggest entertainment launch in history," stealing the title from its predecessor.

It wasn't just Black Ops' … Read more