As expected, Activision is going to make a ton of money off Modern Warfare 3. The publisher raised its financial outlook for the rest of the year under the assumption Modern Warfare 3 and Skylanders: Spryo’s Adventure would sell exceptionally well. Spryo is doing just fine, but MW3 is firmly in record-breaking territory. In one day, MW3 made over $400 million and sold over 6.5 million copies in North America and the United Kingdom.

Activision is holding a conference call today to report its third quarter 2011 earnings. Before the call takes place, Activision Blizzard sent out a press release detailing how well it did in the quarter. The company reported revenues of $754 million, which is $9 million more than what it earned in the third quarter of 2010. The majority of Activision Blizzard’s earnings ($427 million) came from digital purchases. More than half of the company’s revenues came from digital channels.

Call of Duty: Black Ops has shattered a previous record once held by Modern Warfare 2. Activision announced Black Ops has set an entertainment sales record by grossing over $650 million dollars within its first five days of release. Activision was expecting Black Ops to make $550 million in its first five days. These sales are the culmination of a worldwide CoD fever that is showing no signs of cooling down.

Preliminary sales figures for Call of Duty: Black Ops are in. Black Ops has taken the title from Modern Warfare 2 as the biggest entertainment launch in the history of the world. This confirms GameStop’s prediction that Black Ops would be the biggest launch in the retailer’s history. Activision’s predictions that Black Ops would sell 20% less than Modern Warfare 2 couldn’t be more off (based on first day sales).

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is tearing up the record books. The full game doesn’t come out until November 16, 2010, but fans are already playing the demo like crazy. According to Electronic Arts, the demo for Hot Pursuit has been downloaded over two million times. No other game in the franchise’s history has reached this milestone faster than the latest Hot Pursuit. Gamertell’s staff has at least two people who downloaded the demo and we rather enjoyed it.

The DS has had three redesigns since its introduction in 2004. Every new iteration from the DS Lite to the DSi XL has given the DS a significant boost in sales. This ensures the DS is always on the minds of gamers. Celebrity endorsements and embracing the casual gamers also paid huge dividends to the success of the DS.

On March 23, 2009, Mike Leyde did what many thought was impossible – he mastered Bejeweled 2. After playing for over 2,200 hours and three years, he managed to get the highest possible score in the game – 2,147,482,575. Theoretically, he could have gotten an even higher score, but when he made the next match the game couldn’t handle it and his score turned into a negative number.

So why are we only hearing about this now? The reason is two-fold. Popcap first wanted to verify Leyde’s score to ensure that he had actually had gotten 2.147 billion points in Bejeweled 2, as it’s never been done before and reaching it was considered impossible. Second, 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of Bejeweled and the company thought that news like this was best saved for a special occasional.

If you want to check out all of the stats from Leyde’s momentous game, check out this video on PopCap’s YouTube Bejeweled Channel…

The Chinese operator of World of Warcraft, The9, has announced that the game recently reached a peak concurrency of 1 million players in China, meaning there were a million Chinese players logged into the game at the same time. This is the toughest test for WOW servers in China to date and, lucky for gamers, they passed – most likely because they aren’t Made in China (pun definitely intended)…

To celebrate the launch of the Guinness World Records: Gamers Edition 2008, the first ever Guinness World Records book dedicated to gaming, Guinness is hosting a huge arcade gaming event at Barcade in Brooklyn, NY on April 10, 2008. The event invites all and sundry to prove their arcade gaming mettle for a chance to rewrite the record books.

All gamers 21 and older (bring your ID) can try their luck at breaking five different records…

The Gaming Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records will hit book stores on March 11, 2008, stuffed with some interesting video game records and facts. But it might not feature the feat achieved by Nintendo’s first-party title Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which has become the fastest selling Wii title to sell 1 million more »