COD4 Map Pack Hits Million Downloads in Record Time

Call of Duty 4's Variety Map Pack was downloaded one million times in the first nine days, a new record for Xbox Live Marketplace, Activision said this morning.

The publisher said that more than 30 million sessions of the game, totalling 32 million hours of gameplay, were logged from April 4 to April 12. Sheesh, you guys really do live your COD.

"Infinity Ward is extremely grateful for support from our loyal Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare community around the world," said Robert Bowling, community relations manager, Infinity Ward. "From the beginning, we were committed to do our best and that continues now with the Variety Map Pack. We can't wait to get back online with everyone."

Hit the jump for the full release.

Call of Duty 4 Map Pack is Live

Hop to it, you can now officially download the Variety Map Pack DLC for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. If you're at work and can't get to playing straight away try passing the time by watching this video of the Infinity Ward folks talking up some of the news maps.

COD4: 1.3 Million Online A Day

It takes a ton of people playing online to consistently outperform Microsoft's Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, but just how many people is a ton? According to Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin, between 1.2 and 1.3 million players go play COD4 online every single day, Monday through Sunday, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"That's just 360. There's even more on the other platforms [PS3 and PC], but we just don't have the same numbering system. Overall, even without the other consoles, we are beating the competition. PS3 numbers are monstrously huge. No other game has come close, either online current, or total unique users in a day."

Nearly 1.3m play COD4 "every day" [Eurogamer]

GameStop Hosts COD 4 Map Pack Preview

If you're going to be in New York City or San Jose California and have a little free time on the 28th of March, you might want to stop by GameStop for a special Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack Challenge event. Be one of the first players to get your hands on Broadcast, Creek, Chinatown and Killhouse, the four new multiplayer maps coming out with the April 3rd DLC. Participate in Q&A sessions with developers, trivia contests, eye tests, and finally battle it out on the maps themselves for a chance at various prizes, including a $1,000 gift card. Attendees can register at the GameStop website, with the first few attendees receiving an Xbox Live token that lets you snag the pack for free. A first look at the maps, fabulous prizes, and the chance to hang out at a GameStop after closing hours. What more could a Call of Duty 4 player ask for? Feel free to contact the GameStop directly for a list of prizes, but be warned - the New York store's manager Randy can't find his packet. Poor Randy.

GameStop's Call of Duty 4 Event Page [GameStop via The Mercury News]

Gamefly's Fifth Annual Q Awards

When I first read the words "Q Awards" I auto-magically thought of the late, great actor Desmond Llewelyn but was apparently way off track. These are Gamefly's version of the Oscars sans the cheesy dance routines.

Winners are determined by GameFly members, who according to the GameFly press release are the "... most discerning community of online video game renters." Unfortunately I'm not terribly discerning as I can be easily distracted by bright colors and flashing lights.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took the Q awards triumvirate, winning "Game of the Year," "Xbox 360 Game of the Year," and "PlayStation 3 Game of the Year."

Hit the jump to read about the other winners.

Zero Punctuation On Call Of Duty 4

Zero Punctuation [The Escapist]

Console COD4 Getting New Maps This Spring

To all those who can't get enough Call of Duty 4 multiplayer on the Xbox 360 and PS3, know that new maps are on the way this spring. How many? We don't know. What day will they be here? Not so sure. What will they cost? Wish we could tell you. But one thing's for certain, "the upcoming downloadable content will thrust gamers into a hot zone of added combat across a variety of intense multiplayer locales."

And that's plenty for us.

New CoD4: Modern Warfare Maps (X360) [Gamespy]

MTV's Stephen Totilo decided to eschew the annual Game of the Year chestnut for a much more fun to pronounce and acronymize Game of the Game of the Year or GOTGOTY. Actually he didn't really eschew anything, seeing that he did his own GOTYs not too long ago, but this is still a fun idea. Totilo created a sort of MetaGOTY if you can imagine that (Personally, mine is a billy goat in a Robocop suit) by rounding up all of the GOTYs and tallying them to see which game was selected the most.

Included in the list are such gems as ours, Destructoid's, Joystiq's, The LA Times, The Rocky's and even Yahoo's. The final result? BioShock, it seems was selected the most as GOTY (nine times), while Super Mario Galaxy was selected six times and Call of Duty 4 an appropriate four times.

Forget 'Game Of The Year' — Introducing The 2007 'GOTGOTY' [MTV]

"We're very excited about this achievement especially given so many competitive titles this year," said Will Kassoy, senior vice president, global brand management, Activision Publishing, Inc. "Consumer and critics agree that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best games ever created and further establishes Call of Duty as one of the premier brands in the industry."

First a thing about the name: I didn't pick it. I think it's hilarious, but I'd never name an award after myself, it's obnoxious... and quite funny. Which is what I think the Rocky was going for. There are quite a few closet smart-asses over there. :)

So my annual pick for best video game ran in the Rocky Mountain News today and I picked Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the overall winner. The game beat out The Orange Box, Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

Here's why I decided to pick a war-time first-person shooter sequel over the splendor of a dystopian society, amazing character interaction of Uncharted and innovative design of Galaxy and Orange Box:

Yesterday's weekly posting of Xbox Live statistics on Larry Hryb's website contained a sweet surprise for fans of Infinity Ward's modern take on the FPS war game, as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare finally broke Master Chief's reign as the most-played game on Xbox Live. For months COD4 has been trailing Halo 3 on the chart, to the point where we didn't even have to read the statistics to know what we'd find in those top two slots. Congratulations to Infinity Ward and Activision for literally beating Microsoft at their own game - for this week at least. And don't worry about MC. Halo 2 still remains firmly atop the list of most-played original Xbox titles, and I don't see Battlefield 2: Modern Combat making a push anytime soon.

LIVE Activity for week of 1/14 [Xbox Live's Major Nelson - Thanks WhiskeyJak!]

Last night's barrage of U.S. sales numbers were so overwhelmingly positive for some companies that they actually crawled out of bed early to crow about it. Heck, Nintendo never went to sleep, staying up all night doing coke with Colecovision and Atari and talking about the good old days.

Activision, perhaps a bit more cautious than their first-party counterpart, shot out an email this morning to point out that they are still the number one U.S. console and handheld publisher for 2007. In fact their market share went up an astounding 7.2 percent to a record 17.7 percent. That astounding jump can be attributed to, mostly, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock which was the number one title across all platforms in December, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which was number three.

Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc., commented, "For the first time in our history, we were the #1 U.S. publisher for the calendar year. We are well on our way to delivering sixteen years of record revenue growth and by far our most profitable year ever."

I wonder who they're going to buy next?

More Juicy Turok Gameplay

If I hadn't just played through Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360 last night in one sitting, I'd probably be more impressed with this video. Sure it's got dinosaurs and heaps of neat weapons, but where's the story, the personality... the, dare I say it, tear-jerker ending. I've got to go, I can't talk about this anymore.

Wii Wins the Amazon Christmas

Amazon is just giddy with excitement. The holidays are over and they are bursting at the seams with money spent on presents. Their annual "We made a shitton of money during the holidays" press release went out this morning and in it the the Wii as their top selling console and Call of Duty 4 as their top game.

While they don't release any specific numbers for their video game sales, they do say that Amazon sold Wii system "at approximately 17 per second when they were in stock."

Here's the top ten current lists of video game and hardware sales on Amazon:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the Xbox 360
Super Mario Galaxy
Wii Nunchuk control
Wii Play with Remote
Wii Remote
Wii Charging Station
Wii
Assassin's Creed for the Xbox 360
Wii Zapper with Link's Crossbow Training
Playstation 3 Wireless Sixaxis Controller

The PSP 2K, in the number 12 spot, was the next best-selling platform after the Wii

Amazon.Com Best Sellers [Amazon]

"We continue to see strong consumer response to our wholly owned and internally developed titles — Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," said Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc. "We are well positioned to continue our leadership position through the remainder of the year and are on track to delivering another record year of revenue growth and the most profitable year in our history."

Maxim Announces Top Ten Video Games of 2007

Sure, TIME's list of the best ten games released this calendar year had its controversial entries, but I highly doubt anyone will dispute gaming bible Maxim's choices. Basically, all you really need to know is that 2K Games The Darkness surpassed Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in Maxim magazine's year end wrap up of the best games of 2007. What else did The Darkness beat out? Halo 3, Rock Band and Mass Effect, who sadly didn't make the cut, despite one of those featuring hot girl-on-girl action. At least Halo 3 nabbed the coveted "User Pick" for top spot. Maybe similar mags Stuff or King will throw them a bone. Anyhoo, enough teasing. Here are the top ten games of 2007, as decreed by the editors of Maxim.

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
3. The Orange Box
4. BioShock
5.God of War II
6. Super Mario Galaxy
7. The Darkness
8. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
9. John Woo's Stranglehold
10. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

We'll be tabulating the LOLs, ROFLs, ROFLMAOs, WTFs and GTFOs as soon as possible and plan to provide nice pie charts.

Best of 2007: Video Games [Maxim]

While Xbox 360 owners have been enjoying the hell out of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's multiplayer, owners of the PlayStation 3 version like myself have been getting an altogether different definition of deep and hard. Players are reporting long wait times for matches, with connection issues plaguing servers once the matches do start. According to Inifinity Ward, the problem lies with servers getting slammed with far greater traffic than they had anticipated. Fortunately the PS3 server team is on the job.

The server team has been working on this all weekend, and will be working through the night. They're upgrading all server hardware as well as dedicated an individual database to each functionality to improve performance and handle the traffic hitting the servers.

Update: PSN Matchmaking [Infinity Ward Forums]