Let's get the obvious out of the way — these games make serious dough.

"Business leaders have an opportunity to... reverse an alarming trend of not recognizing the sacrifices made by the men and women of our military service," CEO Robert Kotick tells Victor Godinez at the Dallas Morning News. Business leaders also have the opportunity to make a gajillion dollars on the backs of those sacrifices.

But, that's being jaded — perhaps too jaded. Video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have not been critical of the military like many war films of this past decade have. What's more, war, for better or worse, is an ideal setting for a video game. There's conflict, shooting, objectives — the laundry list goes on and on.

As Godinez points out, video games are filling that gap left by Hollywood.

"The last Brothers in Arms video game," developer Randy Pitchford says, "if that was a movie shot in live action, could never exist because it would cost a billion dollars."

Video games take command of war epics as movies retreat from recent conflicts [Dallas Morning News]

Backing up that cover pic is, of course, a lengthy article on the man. Profiling the rise and rise of the corporate rock star, Forbes writer Peter C. Beller does a fine job of telling Kotick's story. How Activision is his baby, how it's rolling in cash, how Viacom were going to have to wrest control of that baby from his cold, clammy dead hands.

But then we get to this bit.

EA also teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band, a shameless knockoff of Guitar Hero that added drums, bass and a microphone to the world of make-believe rock stars.

Probably shouldn't believe every line Activision PR feeds you there, Pete.

Activision's Unlikely Hero [Forbes]

Yes, the Activision boss joins three other runners-up - the big men from Heinz, JP Morgan and Southwest Airlines - and came in behind only Brian Goldner, boss of...Hasbro.

Why Bobby? Marketwatch points out the obvious:

The one-two punch of Activision and Blizzard is expected to generate about $4.7 billion in revenue this year — in excess of 60% above what Activision drew as a stand-alone company in its last fiscal year.

That's why they went Bobby.

Kotick changes the game at Activision Blizzard [Marketwatch] [Image]

Kotick claims that, shortly after the game's release, "every single artist" who appears in Guitar Hero III saw their featured tracks become their most-downloaded on iTunes. Which is making the artist money. And every time a kid boots up the game and is introduced to an artist like Aerosmith or Van Halen for the first time, that's more money an artist - and their label - will make.

Which has Activision in a unique position. Kotick says that if artists and labels are making money off Guitar Hero, they want to be making money off the artists and labels, in terms of both straight profits and in things like advertising and marketing presence (presumably on tours, via endorsements, etc). And if Universal (yes, he mentions their new labelmates by name) don't cough up, well, they'll just go and find another label who will.

Looks like somebody's got his swagger on.

As far as Europe's concerned, it's a simple approach. The first step is getting enough product on the market, which they're already doing: Kotick says that while North America was the focus in 2007 as far as shipping allocations and marketing went, in 2008 they'd be focusing on Europe. The second step was in securing more local content: Activision's "relationship" with Universal music has given the company access to a huge roster of European acts, not only for the primary markets of Britain, France and Germany, but also bands that will let them target other areas, such as Spain and Italy.

Sounds familiar, I know, and probably not enough to win out over Rock Band's charms. Then again, so long as Rock Band remains a ghost on European release schedules, that's a moot point: Europeans can play Guitar Hero III, right now. They can't play Rock Band, and don't know when (or even if) they'll be able to play Rock Band.

As for Asia (Kotick only specifically addresses China and Korea), well, things are a little more ambitious. Citing experience they've already picked up from Blizzard - one of the few Western devs to crack the Asian market - Kotick says that future success in the region will rest not on boxed products like it does in the West, but in getting the game into internet cafes.

There are, Kotick says, 300,000 of them just in China. They're trusted local institutions. They have credit and billing structures already in place, and are a place where people meet, hook up and hang out. Using the PC version of GHIII as an example, all they'd need to do would be to hook a USB guitar into a PC, flood the game with local content (again, thanks to their new relationship with Universal), set up organised competitions and ladders and watch the cash money come flooding in.

"It's an incredibly natural way to think about Guitar Hero in a market like China", said Kotick, who also stated that such a move would be entirely on a pre-paid basis, and that they could have "multiple instruments in the same room". Funny. He could have just said "guitars", but no, he said "instruments". Multiple instruments.

I was at the BA terminal a few weeks ago and I had to take my belt off and it was 20 minutes before the plane was leaving and it was an international flight. I started running and realized I need my belt. My pants fell down. And I tripped.