Something is amiss at the Infinity Ward offices in Encino, California. A few short hours ago plain clothed security personnel, described as bouncers, paid an unannounced visit outside the Infinity Ward offices. When questioned, these individuals refused to reveal their identity and why there were there.

According to G4’s Patrick Klepek, the source close to Infinity Ward has reported things have been “tense” with Activision recently. Infinity Ward studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West met this morning with Activision, but haven’t been seen since.

The source close to Infinity Ward provided these few details…

“Everyone is on edge,” said my source.

The mood around the Infinity Ward offices is currently described as “freaked out” and “confused.”

“We just wanna make our games,” said my source.

We will be sure to keep you updated as this story unfolds.

[UPDATE 1]

GameInformer has reported on the mounting speculation on NeoGAF. A screen shot of FaceBook has surfaced alleging that Jason West has been terminated. At the time of publishing this image has not been verified.

Alleged FaceBook Screen Shot

[UPDATE 2]

Kotaku is reporting that Jason West’s LinkedIn profile indicates he is no longer working at Infinity Ward as of March 2010. Evidently this was not a mutually agreed upon exit.

Jason West's LinkedIn Update

Infinity Ward offices in Encino, CA

Activision has just released its calendar Year 2009 financial results, which confirms its releasing new titles for Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, True Crime and the SpiderMan series, all by the end of 2010.

Activision Blizzard has just confirmed that the firm has made a $1.56 billion revenue for Q4 2009. The full year revenue stands at a staggering $4.28 billion.

The company has also confirmed some new games are in the making, as a new Call Of Duty and Guitar Hero game are confirmed.

We generated approximately $1.2 billion in operating cash flow and ended the year with approximately $3.3 billion in cash and investments.  For the calendar year, in the U.S. and Europe, Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare™ 2 was the #1 best-selling title overall and DJ Hero™ was the highest grossing new IP launched in 2009.  Additionally, through Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft® we remain #1 in the subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game category worldwide, according to The NPD Group and internal Activision Blizzard estimates.”

Modern Warfare 2’s success:

In November 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became the first video game ever to surpass $550 million in retail sales in its first five days of release, according to Activision Publishing’s internal estimates.  To date, the game has sold more than $1 billion in retail sales worldwide, according to The NPD, Charttrack and Gfk.

Stick with PlayStation LifeStyle as we reveal more on the financial results. Do they include new gaming news, like how the EA Q3 report did? Stay tuned.

Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest entertainment launch in history. Triumphing the charts for countless weeks, while defeating strong competition amongst the likes of Assassin’s Creed 2 and FIFA 10. It continues to do so as Modern Warfare 2 claims Christmas’s # 1 spot.

Confirmed by Chart-Track, the shooter continues to gloat its position by enjoying its sixth consecutive week at the top of the UK charts. A 24 percent bump in sales saw FIFA 10 take second spot for Christmas. Wii fit Plus takes claims third place while Assassin’s Creed 2 sees a drop. James Cameron Avatar: The Game and Left 4 Dead 2 just misses out on the top 10.

Now helping veterans. Hooah!

That’s right, Activision (more specifically, Activision Blizzard), publisher of the behemoth Call of Duty series games, is about to help real-life veterans in a very real, monetized way.

Activision Blizzard has pledged a cool $1 million USD to a “Call of Duty Endowment” or CODE for short. This will help support other groups that assist veterans with their careers after serving their country. Veterans often give everything to the military and have a tough time adjusting to life after touring. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick stated:

The joblessness rate that [veterans] should have should be far less than the national average, not more…These [veterans] are super-capable people, to the extent that you can put them on track to develop more skills, the development potential that we’ve identified is extraordinary.

The first $125,000 of this fund will go to the Paralyzed Veterans of America to help open a vocational rehabilitation center.

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“It certainly has the characteristics of a category that would be interesting to us, but we would have to convince ourselves that we could enter successfully, accomplish leadership and that we’d have something new and different to bring to the party.

Right now the barriers to entry there are pretty significant, but it is certainly the size of a category that we would be interested in.”

Activision Blizzard’s reasoning for making sports games is definitely sound, and if they can become leaders within the genre we’ll definitely end up massive improvements all around for everything from football to hockey.

[Source]

The dropping of the Call of Duty title from Modern Warfare 2 may have looked like a good idea at first, but it now seems this wasn’t as great as first thought.

According to tracking firm OTX, Modern Warfare 2 has lost a considerable chunk of brand awareness by dropping the Call of Duty moniker. OTX has said that Activision may damage retail chances by up to 20%. Nick Williams, of OTX, had this to say:

“Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”

He continued with this:

“At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title. However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed ‘Call of Duty’ from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.”

Recently, Activision made a statement that they would drop support for all PlayStation platforms, unless a PS3 price drop was made. You can read about that story here.

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“I was disappointed not to see any sort of aggressive price cutting. Of all the things that the hardware companies need to be doing right now, it’s recognizing the difficulties of the economy and pricing their hardware appropriately.”

But considering companies like Sony Computer Entertainment posted a $605 million loss for the year ending March 31st, the hardware manufacturers may not have enough breathing room to appease the demands of Kotick and his fellow software publishers. A more economic strategy for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would be to simply make their hardware more desirable through compelling software releases, which made a grand showing at E3, and keep the innovative firmware updates coming.
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Some new changes to the Guitar Hero franchise have been announced for the series’ fifth installment.

The first one is the Band Moments feature, which rewards the members of a band for playing different note patterns in sync. This feature will be tailored into the songs from all 85 artists included in the game, 25 of which have never appeared in a music game before. The Guitar Hero Music Studio, which allows the creation of songs, is also getting a redesign. Though, no further details have been offered. Stay tuned on PSLS as we keep you up to date on this title.
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Guitar Hero, much like [shal]Rock Band[/shal] now, allows up to four band mates to play together. The standard setup includes a singer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer. But there was no real way to have two drummers, three bassists, or four singers. [shal]Neversoft[/shal], however, is determined to change all that with [shal]Guitar Hero 5[/shal].

Not content with simply following in Rock Band’s footsteps, Guitar Hero 5 (which should really just be called Band Hero) will allow players to create any instrument setup they like, adding some much needed freedom to the multiplayer sessions. There’s also a new addition to the series called RockFest, which includes five competitive modes that can be played both online and offline.

Neversoft is also eliminating the progression system, which means the entire song list is playable the second you pop in the disc. And better yet, all DLC from Guitar Hero: World Tour will be playable in Guitar Hero 5. Definitely a smart move that will win praise from fans of the series.
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After completing the company’s revenue report yesterday, Activision Blizzard’s CEO Michael Griffith was able to talk about his company’s new racing title, and why he expects it to be so successful.

The developer of Blur is former Xbox 360 exclusive developer Bizarre Creations, the team behind the popular Project Gotham Racing series. Griffith claims that Blur ”brings real innovation to the racing category and is looking very strong.” He continued by stating:

“From a business perspective, we are targeting Blur to do for racing what Call of Duty did for shooters. That was the goal when we originally acquired Bizarre Creations to make this game.”

We can expect to see Blur at next month’s E3 convention, and hopefully the game lives up to the CEO’s bold words.
[Source]

Since the release of EA’s revolutionary skateboarding title, appropriately named Skate, Tony Hawk has had an extended hiatus. The simple, yet intuitive, control scheme caused many skateboarding fans to flock to EA’s offering, and caused Activision to rethink how Tony Hawk games are made.

After undergoing what Senior VP Will Kassov calls the “Tony Hawk Innovation Plan”, it looks like the famous skateboarding franchise will be returning with a new developer at the helm. And in addition to this, the game is likely to include a peripheral motion controller. No word yet on whether the game will see a 2009 release, but we’ll keep you updated as this story develops.

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[shal]Activision Blizzard[/shal] was even bold enough to declare “[shal]Guitar Hero World Tour[/shal] was the #1 best-selling third-party title in the U.S. across all platforms in dollars.” And with $2 billion in sales from the title, it’s hard to argue with them. The flipside is that we now have multiple Guitar Hero titles scheduled to release this year.

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[Source] Special thanks to Eddie!

As you may know, we’ve discovered new information on Treyarch’s next game, Call of Duty 7. Activision Blizzard has released a COD game every year since 2005, so Treyarch would be next in line after the release of Modern Warfare 2. The insider discussed the music selected for this game:

“Mentioned were Vietnam War era tunes, as well as Cuban, African, and Soviet Union music.”

If Call of Duty 7 truly does put players in the Vietnam conflict, we may face a situation where gamers will have to question the ethics of game development. Filmmakers had to face similar issues with their depictions of war films, and hopefully Treyarch and Activision Blizzard stay wary of inappropriately representing, or even glorifying, the Vietnam War.

Yes, there have been plenty of World War II games made. But World War II happened in the 1930s~1940s, and was a lot more clear cut in terms of why the United States became involved. The Vietnam war, however, is still in many people’s memories and still under heavy debate. In fact, many individuals who play such a game would have direct family members who participated in this war.

ShellShock: Nam ‘67 is the only game series on the market that even touches this subject, and hasn’t been commercially or critically successful. The potential problem actually stems from the fact that such a high profile and respected franchise may be choosing this topic. What compounds this even more is that current-gen titles are becoming very realistic in terms of graphics and animation. It’s not like the older days when you could resort to the old copout of “games aren’t even that realistic,” because today’s FPS market demands incredible amounts of authenticity, from the way guns fire to how bullets impact bodies.

We have to ask. Would you be interested in playing through Call of Duty: Vietnam, or does the subject matter turn you off enough to just avoid the title altogether? Let us know in the comment section below.

The last we heard of Wet being published was when Activision was planning to release it. But since Activision and Blizzard decided to merge, the game has been leftin limbo without an official publisher.

All that’s about to change. According to Famitsu, Bethesda will be publishing the third-person title. Not only that, but Amazon, Gamefly, and CD Universe also have Bethesda listed as publisher, so it looks as though the fans of Wet can jump for joy.

Stay tuned on PlayStation LifeStyle for word from Bethesda, and more information on this game.

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