Call of Duty earned both the first and second spot of Major Nelson's annual Xbox rankings, which is a pretty impressive (if totally unsurprising) achievement for Activision's popular military shooter franchise.

Death, taxes and a shooter atop the chart of Xbox Live's top activity. Since Major Nelson has publicized the numbers, the most popular game on Xbox Live—this is according to unique users playing the game while logging into the service, not just those playing multiplayer—has always been a shooter. Gears of War. Halo.…

Fending off challenges from Gears of War 3 and Battlefield 3 during their launch weeks, Call of Duty: Black Ops at last met its match this past week—in its successor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Gears of War 3 was the second most popular game on Xbox Live on the week it launched, topping Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but failing to unseat the 10-month-old Call of Duty: Black Ops.

In the middle of Halofest here in Seattle there stands a Halo. They call it the Halo Commissary, and, well, look who shows up to sell us on all these Halo goods.

Earlier it was reported that a matte finish was coming to the Xbox 360 250GB hard drive configuration, and that is indeed true, but some construed that to mean the glossy case still would be in production. It ain't.