In the company’s quarterly report, Activision Blizzard announced strong numbers in both digital and retail alongside new product releases that should have gamers excited for 2012.

To appease the avid Blizzard fans, the company let drop in the report that Diablo III is targeting a Q2 launch this year. They report that the current beta and auction house testing is going well, so Diablo III should make its Q2 release window.

As for Blizzard’s other franchises, the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is going to be detailed in more depth at a press event on March 19.

In StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm news, they are adding in new multiplayer units. Blizzard is also going to be taking a “more active” role in the eSports community surrounding the game.

Finally, Blizzard has multiple unannounced titles set for 2012 with one of them being Blizzard DOTA – a free-to-play online game. There is also the unannounced MMO that we’ve known about for a while.

As for Call of Duty, as expected there will be a new release this year. The company announced that the series is now the “largest interactive entertainment franchise ever” in the U.S. and Europe.

With each new Call of Duty release, the number of online players has grown exponentially. In the graph below, it shows the number of online players growing by the millions with each new game. Modern Warfare 3 saw a jump of 20 million online players over Black Ops to reach 40 million active monthly users across all Call of Duty games since the original Modern Warfare.

Call of Duty ELITE, the multiplayer service for the game, has reached 7 million users worldwide with 1.5 million of them being paid users. They also announced more DLC than ever before to continue support for Modern Warfare 3. They also announced development of Call of Duty China, a free-to-play microtransaction based game for Asian markets.

If you were wondering what Bungie was up to after they left the Halo franchise, they are hard at work on their new game for Activision that is set to be revealed at some point this year.

Lastly, we can’t forget how amazing Spyro Skylanders has done for the company. The video game where players scan in actual toys to unlock new characters was Activision’s largest new IP launch ever. They sold over 20 million toys and it became the number one children’s title in 2011.

The company took the opportunity to announce Skylanders Giants, new toys that are much larger than the original toys from last year. They will be all new characters with unique in-game powers. Thankfully, the toys will still use the same scanning device called the “Portal of Power” from last year. The toys will be sold in starter packs that come with the “Portal of Power,” expansion packs and stand-alone characters.

Activision Blizzard is looking to have a great year and gamers, no matter the age or type, should find something to enjoy from the publisher in 2012.

In 2012, MW3 will see a downloadable content release every month up until September, right on time for the next Call of Duty release. At least if we’re to believe their announcement which states, “The Call of Duty: MW3 content season kicks off this month first on Xbox LIVE delivering a variety of brand new content every month over the next 9 months for Call of Duty ELITE premium members.”

Along with their overall plan they announced the first DLC “drop”, with two maps: Liberation & Piazza. For Call of Duty ELITE premium members, the content will be available January 24th, with no release date announced for anyone else. Also, Xbox 360 owners will receive the DLC before anyone else due to Activision and Microsoft’s exclusivity deal. Which of course will leave many fans on the PS3 and PC extremely happy (Feel free to grumble in the comments below. As a PC gamer, I’m with you)

For those who are wondering about their “ELITE” program, it’s Call of Duty’s subscription service which allows fans to track lifetime stats across various titles, along with other social functions. Premium members who pay a $50/year fee are privy to a long list of other features, one of those including early access to DLC.

The MW3 season of content is being spearheaded by three development groups under the Activision flag: Infinity Ward, Raven Software (one of my all time favorite devs for Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy), and Beachhead Studio. If you understand the concept of video game development, you know that bringing in three companies for a project is huge. It’s extremely difficult to get a project off the ground with even one developer, let alone three working in tandem.

It will be interesting to see if they can keep their promise regarding monthly content across a nine month span of time. One of the staples of video game development is delays, which can plague even the greatest of developers. So promising content on a monthly basis is a big order to fill.

Here’s the announcement trailer for their “Content Season 2012 Kick-Off”. Enjoy.

Furthermore, the CoD Elite mobile app hasn’t hit yet, and as discussed previously, there are many functionality issues that are severely limiting the service. And then there’s the “no PC support” issue, with Elite only being available to console players. All in all, it sounds like a back to the drawing board situation, but because Activision has already committed itself to the Elite platform, they are trying to fix it on the fly, and that’s going about as well as you’d expect.

According to a report from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the “Elite is temporarily unavailable for the PC” may turn into a “permanently unavailable” scenario, because, apparently, the PC system is just too insecure. The post pointed to a tweet from Call of Duty Elite Twitter page to substantiate their post, and the tweet in question says:

Granted, with so many more people playing Modern Warfare 3 on the Xbox 360 than the other platforms — nothing like using inferior tech, I guess — does it really matter if Elite is available to the PC users? More to the point, with so many console users, does Activision care enough about the PC environment to actually force the issue and ensure PC users get a working version? Considering the fact the current service is struggling so much, it’s doubtful.

As for the insecurity of the PC environment, as pointed out by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, isn’t this something that should’ve been discussed during the early development days? Or do they want us to believe they only discovered it at this late date? Personally, I don’t think the lack of security has anything to do with the lack of Elite service for PC players. It’s clear that Xbox 360 players are the target audience, and the rest of gaming community, while getting some semblance of service, you get the distinct feeling that once Elite works as advertised for the Xbox crowd, the resources being thrown at it will shrink.

In other news, I believe I’ve found a great definition for irony over at the CoD Elite website, especially in light of negative news about the PC platform. Even with the uncertainty surrounding the service, that hasn’t stopped their graphic designers from using an image of laptop, otherwise known as a member of the PC family, on their site.

Wishful thinking, perhaps.

Originally plagued by registration and login issues, the problems have spread to actual functionality of the service. The huge demand by players to track stats, make matches, and organize clans has crashed servers. The service is currently still given “intermittent” status on the official Elite status site, which acknowledged the problems late last week. After blaming high traffic on the failures, they announced that they would throttle access while they worked on the problems –

We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible

In order to assuage frustrated gamers, Elite offered a free month of premium service to existing premium users and extended the Founder eligibility period (where new MW3 players can sign up) until the end of November.

Here’s the latest from the Elite status page:

As we continue to keep everyone updated on the steps we’re taking here to get more of you into Call of Duty Elite, we are aware that some users have been denied entry into the service once they have input their age. We recognize that in regions around the world player age requirements vary. We are happy to say that we have identified some solutions to this issue. Our team is working on the technical changes required, and we expect to announce the details soon on this change. Meanwhile, if you purchased MW3 and were not able to register for Call of Duty ELITE, we wanted to make you aware of this pending change, and we thank you for your patience.

We remain committed to taking all of the necessary steps to increase our capacity for all our users. The Call of Duty Elite team will keep you updated at callofduty.com/elitestatus. Continue to check back here for overall Elite status or for a complete list of FAQs, check out our customer service site. We will also give you updates regularly through the official Twitter account, @CallofDutyElite.

We’re working around the clock 24/7 to resolve things, so thanks again for your patience.

That Twitter account looks like it’s been hit with a load of questions, and it looks like it’s doing its best to answer them. From the wide variety of complaints, we can see that the Elite outage is affecting multiple parts of the service.

Twitter user xMimisReal looks to be having the same problem that this writer is having:

Paddy1322 looks to be having the age verification issue that they mentioned in the above statement:

Some seem to still be having problems even logging in:

Clan making features are currently down as well right now, according to Elite –

Call of Duty Elite’s response to all of these queries basically take this form:

According to feedback we received on a previous WebProNews article on the topic, the problems are prevalent and varied. And many users are beginning to lose patience. Will Elite have to offer more than what they’ve already offered in order to assuage frustrated players? Let us know what you think.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Modern Warfare 3 has been out for a few days now, and it looks like, for the most part – so far so good. It’s received nearly unanimous acclaim from critics and has broken all kinds of sales records by taking in $400 million on launch day. So apart from Battlefield players spamming review sites with negative reviews, it looks like Modern Warfare 3 is going to be one in a long line of commercial successes for the Call of Duty franchise.

The only problem is with the Modern Warfare 3 companion service, Call of Duty Elite. The service, which is basically a social network for COD gamers, allows players to track stats, share recorded match videos, and find players with their interests and skill level for matchmaking.

But if you’ve tried to access the service over the past few days, you know that it’s not really working. And the users that are able to register their accounts are finding that there are some serious flaws with the stat tracking and other services.

Personally, I’ve been unable to connect at all. The one time that I was able to register my account and link my gamertag, I was instructed to log back in and Elite said that my username did not exist. Since that time, I’ve been unable to sign in at all.

Apparently I’m not alone in having issues, and the Elite team posted an explanation to the Elite status page:

At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time. We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We’re immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible.

They also promise premium subscribers an additional month of the service free of charge, and they will extend the “founder eligibility” where new members can sign up for premium by one month.

As of right now, the service indicator reports intermittent service.

Have you been having problems with Call of Duty Elite? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s the full statement:

Since Tuesday’s launch, Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer has been working great. In fact, the amount of players online is even higher than what it was this time last year for Black Ops. Have fun — we hope you continue to enjoy MW3 to the fullest.

However, on Call of Duty Elite, we are having trouble scaling the service to meet demand. Many of you are trying to get in and unfortunately, you can’t right now. You’re frustrated, we know it, and we know we need to fix it. Our teams have been working non-stop to identify issues and resolve them as quickly as possible. Again, these issues have no impact on the performance of the game.

We want to share with you what we know at this time and what we are doing:

At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time. We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We’re immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible.

As more users log into the Elite system, you may find that the wait to get into Elite is longer than you expect. We know how frustrating that is and we appreciate your patience. Many of you are now able to see your player card and stats, but if you don’t see all your recent matches or career summary, don’t worry — your gameplay data for your entire careers in both Black Ops and MW3 is safely stored, and it will all be available to you once these issues are resolved.

And for our premium members who are Founders, know that granting your status and delivering your in-game benefits in MW3 is a priority. Also, to ensure that every premium member receives their full money’s worth, we are immediately and automatically extending your membership to Call of Duty Elite by 30 days at no additional cost. If you’re still considering becoming a premium member, we’re going to extend Founder eligibility until the end of the month, and you will also receive the additional 30 days of access.

In fact, Modern Warfare 2 sold so well, it changed the landscape of how video games are perceived, snarky dating guides by damned. No longer are video games restricted to the basement dwellers who prefer to live their lives vicariously through animated pixels and polygons. The financial success of MW2 made it clear video games had finally graduated to a legitimate form of entertainment. Considering the records the game broke, the evolution was unavoidable.

With that in mind, can we expect the same from Modern Warfare 3, which hit the stores Tuesday morning at midnight, and needless to say, the Internet is reacting in a giddy manner. Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook are just some of the places the Modern Warfare 3 release is being celebrated.

And then the was the push from Activision themselves, which provided us with the nifty “Vet and n00b” commercial:

And so on and so on.

For what it’s worth, the majority of the reviews for MW3 have been quite glowing, but this is one game that’s probably “bad review” proof, that is, it doesn’t matter if Yahtzee Croshaw happens to rip it to shreds — something that hasn’t happened yet — people are still going to buy it like hotcakes.

Oddly enough, however, while the critics seem to be enjoying MW3, the anti-Modern Warfare folks are busy trolling over at Metacritic:

Whatever the case, the good is outweighing the negative, just as long as you aren’t this dude’s girlfriend:

Consider this a head start for EA if you will, although, expect Activision’s offering to quickly close the gap when it launches next Tuesday.

Whatever the final numbers are for these first-person shooters, and regardless of Modern Warfare 3‘s impending success, EA will undoubtedly still be celebrating Battlefield 3, especially when you consider the latest installment sold five million copies in one week, which catapulted to the top of EA’s fastest-selling game list. This means that ever since arriving in stores on October 25th, the newest version of Battlefield sold faster than EA’s ubiquitous Madden franchise, which is news in and of itself.

That fact that Madden is not the fastest-selling game is surprising, but then again, Madden gets an update every year and the new version of Battlefield has been completely overhauled for the both the next-gen consoles and the PC market, where the game truly shines:

EA released several indicators of the game’s success: Battlefield 3 fans executed 73 million “savior kills”, 48 million “revives” by medics and destroyed 67 million vehicles. And they also accrued 2.5 million Facebook Likes and 200,000 Twitter followers, EA said.

Of course, the true test of Battlefield’s appeal will be known when Modern Warfare 3 — which is being billed as “the most anticipated game ever” — hits the stores, which happens in on November 8. Even with Battlefield’s undeniable hot start, some industry analysts aren’t too worried about how the newest installment of Modern Warfare will do:

[Michael Pachter, videogame analyst, Wedbush Morgan Securities] forecasts that Modern Warfare 3 will come out on top with 16 million copies sold worldwide this year. That’s double the sales total he predicts for Battlefield 3, which should sell 8 million copies globally. And that’s just this year. Modern Warfare 3 could sell an additional 8 million copies in 2012 and Battlefield 3 could tally another 2 million units sold next year.

Considering the incredible success of Modern Warfare 2, it’s not as if Pachter is going out on a limb with his prediction, although, it should be noted that, in only a week’s time, Battlefield 3 is over halfway to his prediction of 8 million units sold, and the 2011 Christmas shopping season — a period that should boost each title’s sales even further — hasn’t even begun yet, at least not in earnest.

Just in case you need yet another reminder, here are the launch videos for both installments, starting with Battlefield:

About two weeks in, more than 2 million have already signed up for the beta. This is a promising number for Elite developers Beachhead Studio and Activision, to say the least.

This figure was announced on Activision’s Dan Amrich’s blog One of Swords. He tells us that the official COD: Elite beta will launch July 14th and users who have signed up should check their inboxes for an official invite.

And they want more beta testers. According to Amrich, the 2 million current signups only represent about 6% of the total Call of Duty world.

The official start of the beta is a month away, so there’s still plenty of time for you to sign up. When the studio head at Beachhead said this would be a live beta, he was not kidding — your participation really can make a difference in how Elite evolves. And don’t be discouraged by the big number, thinking you shouldn’t bother because they already have enough people — two million volunteers among 30 million Call of Duty players is a small amount. More would be even better

It looks like COD: Elite hasn’t been hurt initially by all the talk of it being a “paid service.” A FAQ page was quickly put out on the website to clarify the difference between Elite free and Elite Premium. First and foremost (and this bears repeating) multiplayer will be free.

And most features of Call of Duty Elite will be available through a free membership. Here’s a little chart that details what will be included in the service for free –

It’s still unknown exactly what the premium membership will look like, and we still don’t have a price yet. Here’s their explanation on why we don’t know any of this yet –

The premium membership of Call of Duty Elite (which is completely optional) will set a new gold standard for what the multiplayer and community experience for a console game can be. Why are we not revealing all of the features that are part of the premium service today? Simple. Because the service was designed to be deeply integrated with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and will not be demonstrable until we are closer to the launch of the game. We know seeing is believing, and over the next few months we will be revealing and demonstrating more of the premium features and by the end of the summer, we will reveal the entire service in full.

If your little heart can’t wait to obsessively monitor your K/D ratio and accuracy with the scoped Python, Amrich can provide you with a little fix. He’s put up an updated post on everything he knows about COD: Elite.

They hype level for both games is extremely high, with EA seeing a 700 percent increase of pre-orders; and, well, Modern Warfare is Modern Warfare. The buzz is always high around this particular title. However, the war for 2011 FPS supremacy may be over before it’s begun, thanks to some backlash in England concerning Modern Warfare 3′s content.

According to a report in the Daily Mail (via The Escapist), some scenes from the upcoming game remind some of the 7/7 attacks that took place in London on July of 2005. In the Modern Warfare 3 reveal, certain scenes feature the British Parliament and the London Underground getting attacked.

The Mail also has screenshots of the scenes in question:

Vivienne Pattison, spokesman for campaign group Mediawatch UK, said: “I have concerns as these games are hyper-real and take place in a landscape we are familiar with. In light of the fact we have just had the 7/7 inquests, it is in incredibly poor taste.”

Pattison also supported a ban on the release of Saw IV, to provide some additional perspective.

Of course, the Modern Warfare franchise is no stranger to controversy. When MW 2 was released, a great deal was made about the airport execution scene, but ultimately, Modern Warfare 2 broke records when it was released, and England was right in the middle of those record-breaking sales.

With that in mind, it would be awfully surprising if Modern Warfare 3 was banned in England. In fact, this kind of controversy will only help market the game, because, as we’ve learned time and time again, this kind of outcry only increases interest in the item being discussed. With that in mind, don’t be surprised if Modern Warfare 3 breaks the records set by MW 2, especially in the British Isles.

Additionally, 63% of parents with children who play games consider themselves gamers with the number increasing to 83% for parents ages 35 and younger, and 70% of parents pay close attention to the ratings when purchasing a game for themselves or their families.

"Parents rely on and value the ESRB ratings in helping them decide which games to allow their children to play," said Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing.

"Our ‘Ratings Are Not A Game’ education initiative underscores our commitment to helping parents better understand and utilize the ratings system as they select age appropriate games and determine the best way for the entire family to enjoy the gaming experience."

Other key survey findings include:

• Gamers devote 32% of their leisure time to entertainment with video games accounting for the largest share – approximately 19%.
• 76% of parents agree that video games are a part of their family’s life, and are something they’re very comfortable with.
• Among parent gamers, 52% of their video gaming playing time is spent with their children.
• Approximately 62% of parents conduct research before purchasing a video game that their child wants.