News comes via MCV that Activision has revealed Call of Duty 5 at a conference call where they discussed its most recent financial success.

For Call of Duty, we’ll bring the intensity of the recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare title to yet a new military theater, to engage our significantly larger user based, which nearly doubled last year as new users came into the franchise.

We’ll launch on all four platforms we participated on in fiscal 2008 plus we will launch on the PS2 and the Wii. We’ll drive category sales of downloadable maps and enhanced Call of Duty 4 retail SKUs.

If I'm not much mistaken this one will not be developed by Ininity Ward, and was rather given to Treyarch, makers of the lukewarm Call of Duty 3 for the consoles.

Our good buddies over at WorldofWar.net were invited to Blizzard's offices in California to preview the latest build of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

As they put it, "We've brought back oodles of goodness that you'll want to start devouring as soon as you can."

Some pretty good info in there about the Death Knight class. Check it out.

The official site for Rockstar's mega-successful GTA IV is now offering a short-ish guide with tips for all you multiplayer buffs.

As Eurogamer explains, "It has a few handy tips and tricks, but mostly describes what's on offer and how to get the most out of it; worth a read if, like us, you didn't know you could phone someone half-way across the map using your in-game mobile so you could call them names.

"Also covered are taunts, achievement levels, auto-aim pros and cons, blip settings and pad control diagrams."

There are many things that are wrong about EA, but pre-release demos of games certainly isn't one of those things. Gamers looking forward to Battlefield: Bad Company, the latest game from the critically-acclaimed developer DICE, will be happy to hear that a demo will be hitting Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Store on June 5. That's more than two weeks before the game hits retail on June 23.

The single-player portion of the demo puts you at the start of your 'B' company career and introduces you to some of the game's characters, while the multiplayer part includes the Gold Rush mode on the Oasis map. People who pre-order the game at participating retailers will receive early access to the demo.

Whoooosshh! *That's Mario Kart Wii* pwn1ng n00bs in Japan* Latest sales figures show MKW sold 173,000 copies in the first week of May, for a grand total of 1,120,000 so far.

01. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 173,000 / 1,120,000
02. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP) - 102,000 / 1,909,000
03. Link's Crossbow Training (Wii) - 93,000 / NEW
04. Wii Fit (Wii) - 52,000 / 1,986,000
05. Meccha! Taiko Drum Master DS: 7-tsu no Shima no Daibouken (DS) - 42,000 / 98,000
06. Pokémon Ranger: Batonnage (DS) - 31,000 / 508,000
07. Boura wa Kaseki Holder (DS) - 27,000 / 84,000
08. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) - 24,000 / 102,000
09. Deca Sports (Wii) - 24,000 / 186,000
10. Wii Sports (Wii) - 22,000 / 2,959,000

Microsoft says it's fed up with Sony's "snowing of the consumers and the press," adding that their rival has "failed to deliver on numerous promises." MS also challenges Sony’s latest European PS3 sales figures, and, probably, though this is not confirmed, spits in their general direction French-style.

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg told Destructoid the following: “We have been fighting Sony's promises from the day we entered the market. Three years ago at E3 they showed what PS3 games would supposedly look like with the Killzone 2 video, that we are now learning will ship four years later. That means that we will have shipped Gears of War and Gears of War 2 before they can even get Killzone out the door.

“Think back to GDC 2007 when Sony promised to leap ahead in online with the Sony Home unveil. Here we are two years later and multiple delays for a product that appears to have little to no buzz. Where are the achievements? The friends list integration across all games? Where is the long-promised video store? Where are all the other products using and networking with their CELL chip? How come Blu-ray did not result in better games? What happened with Sixaxis and rumble? Where is the complete 1080p game library we were promised? If Blu-ray as they said would be such a catalyst to PS3 console sales, then why have PS3 sales over the past couple of months not seen any lift since the format victory?”

To MS it would seem, X360 is the clear winner (which many people don't find shocking at all).

I used to enjoy being around people. These days, however, I've narrowed my affinities down somewhat, to being around two hot lesbians absolutely bent on pleasuring me in a Jacuzzi. Any other being around people, and I get antsy.

In fact, on certain days, I'd even skip on the lesbians and just watch the bubbles in the Jacuzzi and hate them a lot. Bubbly motherfuckers.

"But, Uros, how can you say that," asks the naive eighteen-year-old. "Because I've had fourteen more years than you to hang out with our old pal life," I'd say, and continue to hate the fucking bubbles.

It's not everyday that you hear about a musical shooter. This one is called Everyday Shooter (oh the irony!) and is now available via Valve's Steam service.

Winner of numerous Independent Game Festival Awards including Design Innovation, Everyday Shooter is everything but what its name implies. Drawing upon a mixture of arcade shooter gameplay styles, Everyday Shooter stands apart from the crowd by offering both a wide variety challenges and an all-guitar soundtrack, including procedurally generated guitar riffs used instead of traditional game sound effects.
Everyday Shooter is now available for just $9.99 via Steam, and those who purchase during the first week of availability will save 10% off the regular price.

Musical shooter is the weirdest sounding genre I've ever heard.

Activision is sharing some good news with their investors. Its net profit for year-to-date 2008 stands at some $344M. That's a huge leap over last year, when they made some $85M.

The publisher behind Call of Duty 4 and Guitar Hero III (not to mention the Blizzard deal) has so far this year had a total revenue of $2.9B dollars.

And that, my friends, can buy you a lot of scented toilet paper.

Hm, interesting. Pandemic Studios, creators of the well-known Star Wars: Battlefront series (a company now owned by EA, just like BioWare) has unveiled that they are working on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a Tolkien-flavored spin on the Battlefront concept.

We've got every single battle from the movies and then some. We've got Helm's Deep, Pelennor Fields, Minas Tirith, The Black Gates, and then we've got a bunch of other cool stuff like the Mines of Moria. Weathertop, The Shire. We've got a whole level where you get to play as the evil guys, running through The Shire, trampling Hobbits and burning the place to the ground.

And really we've focused equal parts on the good perspective and the idea of re-creating cinematic moments from the films -- not faithfully so much, but just kind of allowing the player to experience moments that are like the films -- but also really, for the first time, letting you get the chance to play as all of the bad guys. Play as the Balrog, play as Sauron and Sarumon, and really kind of live out that fantasy fulfillment of "what would it be like to really just destroy Middle-Earth? What if evil had won?"

I found Lord of the Rings games about as fresh as the third season of Prison Break. So not that fresh really. But then again, we are talking about a company wholly owned by the monster-milking corporation known as EA. And EA's gonna keep milking until Gandalf's nipples turn blue.

DICE, creators of the Battlefield series, believes that like the sandwich, the Internet will change the way we see video games. Like what sandwich did to the culinary world. The sandwich was huge.

Anyway, when asked about if there would be only one console in the future, DICE's Ben Cousins had this to say:

"People talk about which of the two, PlayStation or Xbox, is going to be the big platform of the future," Cousins said.

"I think the web is going to be the big platform of the future, whether it's running on an iPhone or a Mac or on the PC."

In a response to a question about the possibility of a 'one console future' Cousins answered, "Yes and it's going to be the web, and it doesn't care if it runs on a phone or runs on a Mac or the PC."

LittleBigPlanet is one of the (rare) hugely anticipated PS3 exclusive releases. So if you are on the lookout for this one, know that Sony has spilled the beans during their Euro press event, announcing that the game will be arriving "this October."

For those of you not in the know, I'll let IGN explain LBP: "it [LittleBigPlanet] gives you a startling amount of freedom to design your own platforming levels through a fun, physics-based interface. Players can cooperatively create and decorate a play space and then upload it for other PlayStation 3 enthusiasts."

They used to call me the LittleBigMan.

Poor Uwe Boll. Seriously. It's not bad enough that everyone's getting a kick of out his failed attempts at Postal movie promotion, now companies are capitalizing on negative marketing against his movies.

Wait.

The man has become an institution of sorts! In a way, he certainly doesn't fail at self-promotion.

That said, the makers of Stride gum today announced that it will provide free packs of gum to those who sign the Stop Uwe Boll internet petition, provided the pettition reaches the targetted one million sigs.

Oh the irony of trying to promote your product off a guy trying desperately to make money off of shamelessly promoting his garbage. It's a vicious circle of publicity stunts!

"Since gamers are one of our most supportive groups, we've been looking for ways to return the favor," said Stride marketing director Gary Osifchin. "And what better way is there to get gamer's backs than by helping them rescue their cherished videogames from the clutches of Uwe Boll?"

Source.

God called. He said he's "restructuring" the planet and, as a result, and in order to increase Earth's overall efficiency, a certain number of people will have to be "laid off."

Of course, this begs the question whether people that get a pink slip from planet Earth can really transition in a proper way, whether they can seek opportunities in other parts of the universe.

Experts predict that this move by God is likely a response to the current recession in which Earth finds itself, though fears of the great depression of the Middle Ages (also known as the Black Death) are premature and exaggerated.

"Like any business, our business of maintaining this planet has to evolve in order to stay competitive on the market. Quite simply Earth is faced with tough competition from several neighboring galaxies where the indigenous species are doing a far more efficient job of running their home planet, while keeping resource exploitation at sensible levels," explained God.

"Earth is a huge bubble, and that bubble is likely to burst," God added.