Blizzard Entertainment

Activision Blizzard announced today that Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues to shatter theatrical box office and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell through in dollars. The biggest entertainment launch in history set a new worldwide estimated five-day sell-through record of approximately $550 million, according to internal Activision estimates.

Modern Warfare 2's launch beat all previous first-and five-day entertainment industry box office, book and video game sell-through records*:

- 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 Washington Post is reporting that gaming giant Activision-Blizard is setting up a Call of Duty Endowment to “support other groups that assist veterans with their careers.”  Chief executive Bobby Kotick remarked:

"The joblessness rate that [veterans] should have should be far less than the national average, not more.  How do you expect people to actually join the military if when they leave the military they can't integrate back into the free market they're supposed to be protecting?"

You can read the whole article here.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Legendary Pictures announced today that Sam Raimi has signed on to direct the eagerly-anticipated major motion picture based on Blizzard Entertainment's award-winning Warcraft universe. Raimi has, in the course of his career, clearly demonstrated a genius for developing and adapting existing fictional universes for mainstream audiences while staying true to the spirit of the original content.

PopCap Games today announced the immediate availability of ten all-new World of Warcraft-themed Peggle levels - available for free at www.popcap.com/promos/pegglewow.

This all-new WoW-themed Peggle mash-up is a stand-alone version of Peggle, available for free and combining the sights, sounds and storyline of World of Warcraft with the rainbows and unicorns of everyone’s favorite peg-popping pastime. It features ten new levels with Peggle masters Bjorn the Unicorn and Splork with his Space Blast facing off against denizens of Azeroth in scenes with names like “Too Soon, Executus” and “The Traitor King” – as well as ten new challenges with titles such as “Phat Lewtz” and “Pwnyxia.”

That's the rumor, at least according to this article on GameSpy. "A press release out of Sweden tries to convince us that Blizzard has now confirmed a 2009 release for the first instalment of StarCraft II. Out of the DreamHack computer festival Press2Play.tv claims to have it on good authority that this is indeed the case."

This is, of course, just a rumor at this point. But let's hope this is one rumor that proves to be correct.