Activision Blizzard pulled in $981 million in revenue in the first quarter of this year ending March 31. That's up from the company's projected $860 million (which happens to be the revenue rival EA earned in its last quarter).

"Our better-than-expected first quarter results were driven by strong global consumer response to the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero franchises and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, despite challenging economic times," the company's CEO, Bobby Kotick, said in a statement.

Kotick claims Activision as the #1 third-party console and handheld third-party publisher in North America and as the top third-party for the Wii worldwide.

Among the highlights for Activision Blizzard's quarter were Wrath of the Lich King maintaining the top spot on the PC charts according to NPD and Guitar Hero's sales rising by 84% year over year in Europe according to Charttrack and Gfk.

Activision is bullish on its next quarter, which will see the release of Transformers and Ice Age games along with Prototype, the already-released Wolverine game and new Guitar Hero titles (Smash Hits and Modern Hits, for consoles and DS, respectively.)

With 2008 sales rising 24.4% over last year to $8.8 billion dollars, GameStop laughs at our puny economic recession. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone the company's sales hit $3.5 billion, up 21.9% over last year's $2.9 billion, with net earnings of $232.3 million and comparable store sales up +9.6%. I could go on, citing their 2008 overall net earnings of $398.3 million, with comparable store sales increasing +12.3&, but why bother? Half of you don't understand this, and the other half just find it completely obnoxious.

Let's just sum things up. GameStop is doing very well, and expects to continue to do so. They opened 1,002 stores in 2008, and plan on opening another 400 this year. They are feeling no pain, and just wanted to make sure everybody knew it. Good for them, but in the current economic climate it's like walking into a room full of starving people, rubbing your stomach and saying, "Mmmmm, I am sooo stuffed!"

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick boasted that 2008 was the company's 17th consecutive year of growth, with operating income up 20% from the previous year. The company highlighted its publishing of two of the top-five best-selling franchises on the consoles across all platforms, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, claiming it was the number one third-party publisher on Nintendo's Wii platform.

Similarly, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was touted as the #1 PC title in North America and Europe for the calendar year.

Holiday quarter earnings were $1.2 billion, Activision Blizzard said. Thanks to being flooded with money, Blizzard Activision ended the year with $3 billion in cash and no debt.

Kotick said during a conference call that Activision Blizzard has "more products than ever before" planned for release in 2009, "a small minority of which will consist of a select few wholly owned, internally produced original intellectual properties."

It plans to launch new titles in the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises, with new "properly vetted" intellectual properties such as the first-person shooter Singularity and music game DJ Hero in the calendar year.

The company pointed to two other titles, NBA 2K9 and Carnival Games as leaders for the quarter, laying out its fiscal 2009 game plan. That includes two batches of Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable episodes due by October 31, 2009, one of which has already been announced and dated. The company boasted that more than 3 million games in the Carnival Games series have been shipped.

Take-Two list the PlayStation 3 as its biggest revenue generator on the publishing side, with 35% of the quarterly take. That beats out the Xbox 360, which brought in 28% of its publishing dollars, and the Wii, at 11%.

For the entire fiscal year, Take-Two brought in $1.5375 billion in revenue, with $97.1 million in net revenue. That's much better than the company's 2007, when it raked in $981.8 million, resulting in a loss of over $138 million.

New video games sales were up 10%, with GameStop reporting that its five best sellers were Madden NFL 09, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Fable II, Wii Fit and Guitar Hero World Tour.

"Despite the dramatic decline of the global economy and its severe impact on the entire retail industry, GameStop had a strong quarter," Daniel DeMatteo, Chief Executive Officer, said. "Sales have been very robust over the last several weeks, driven by strong new title releases such as Activision's Call of Duty: World at War and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and Microsoft's Gears of War 2."

The majority of Midway's earnings came from the Xbox 360, on which it released Unreal Tournament III and TNA iMPACT! (emphasis Midway's). The quarter's second biggest earner, Nintendo's Wii, has given Midway the most money for the full year, with almost $30 million YTD in revenue.

Unsurprisingly, Midway is pinning its hopes on the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe to help pull it out of its financial funk next quarter. Midway CEO Matt Booty said something about "align" and "brand" and Mortal Kombat but we can't recall it all because we started thinking how Booty is a funny name.

MIDWAY REPORTS 2008 Q3 RESULTS (PDF) [Midway]

In a call to investors and analysts, Zelnick and crew chalked up the better than planned for quarter to sales of stuff like Carnival Games and Manhunt 2, plus portions of Take-Two's back catalog. I'm not much of a gambler, but I'd be willing to wager that next quarter, they'll do much, much better.

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Reports First Quarter Fiscal 2008 Financial Results [Take-Two]

The only bad news? Haze was pushed back. Again. Prince of Persia fans, however, have something to look forward to.

The financial results from Ubi reveal that the publisher has yet another Prince of Persia game officially in the works, planned for fiscal year 2008-09. We've heard about it before, though, as rumors of a Prince of Persia: Ghosts of the Past arrived later last year alongside supposed screen shots.

It should really be no surprise that Ubi is banking on another Prince game—it's been two years since the last console release, after all. Plus, there's a movie coming that will "synergize" nicely. We're just assuming that whatever the publisher has planned for the series, it's coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Maybe even the Wii. And PC. Possibly the PSP and Nintendo DS. Some calculator watches....

Ubisoft Reports 2007-08 Third Quarter Results (PDF) [Ubisoft]

The company expects an even better follow-up quarter with something along the lines of a billion dollars in revenue, a good portion of it spread across the four separate releases of Guitar Hero III.

Guitar Hero Leads Activision's Record Q2 [Next-Gen]

According the quarterly earnings release, Microsoft shipped 1.8 million Xbox 360s to market, twice that of the previous quarter. The company expects that for the rest of the fiscal year, revenue for the fun side of Microsoft will improve based on "increased sales of Xbox 360 consoles and related games, accessories, and services, and sales of Zune products." Go Zune!

For those keeping score, Sony lost a bunch of money, Nintendo made a fuck-ton of money and Microsoft performed solidly, if not spectacularly. See you next quarter!

Best Buy definitely owes each and every one of us a cookie. The retail juggernaut has reported its profits for the third quarter, seeing a double digit gain in entertainment software sales. This effectively makes gamers and gamer enablers responsible for 17% of their $8.5 billion revenue for the period, due in no small part to the new console launches.

Despite our best efforts they still managed to miss projections, with profits only up $12 million from last year's $138 million, which is probably due in no small part to all that space taken up by CDs that no one buys. They should probably just replace that section with more video games. They can pay me for that suggestion when they deliver my cookie. Michael Fahey

Best Buy Sees Double-Digit Gains In Gaming Sales [Gamasutra]