PiperJaffray analyst Michael Olson says that Call of Duty's "shortened tail" and a general lack of hits are the reasons for lower retail games sales recently. Olson says that the latest game in the series - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 - isn't maintaining the same long tail sales that 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops enjoyed. He projects that the game will be the eighth largest selling game in March 2012, comparing it to Blacks Ops - which was the fifth best selling game in the same period a year ago.

A company called Worlds Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for infringing a patent the company holds related to virtual worlds. Let the trolling begin anew. Worlds Inc. claims that the company is violating a patent it holds related to "systems and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The company alleges in its claim that Activision's World of Warcraft and Call of Duty games violate its patents and that it is due compensation for it.

Activision Blizzard had some luck this week in court when one of the claims of fraud brought against it in the ongoing legal battle against former Infinity Ward heads (Jason West and Vincent Zampella) and Electronic Arts was dismissed by the presiding judge. California State Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle (Los Angeles) today sided with Activision in their assertion that a fraudulent-inducement claim made by West and Zampella was without merit and shouldn't be allowed to move forward. Judge Berle let the duo's claim of promissory fraud move forward.

Common sense dictates that you can't scream "fire!" in a crowded movie theater and that doing so isn't considered protected speech. In the wake of the recent Ohio school shootings, making public jokes about shooting up your local high school also falls under the purview of widely held common sense doctrine.

Yesterday, we reported that French gaming site Gameblog had apparently been blacklisted by Activision for reporting that Amazon’s French portal had briefly posted a listing for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Gameblog editor Grégory Szriftgiser spoke to Kotaku about what happened:

Activision is not a happy camper today as the name of its next Call of Duty title is leaked by Amazon's French portal, then quickly taken offline. According to the Amazon France page, the name of the next game is "Call of Duty Black Ops 2." The news was first reported by Gameblog.

Normally when you imagine someone getting in the Guinness Book of World Records, you correlate the entry to some kind of effort being involved. Someone eats 1,000 eggs, or juggles for 24 hours, etc. But with the new Gamer’s Edition of the book they have added a new category called "the Best Game Ending" and allowed about 13,000 fans to vote.

Zack Bastian, contributor the lovely Law of the Game Blog, talks about what to expect in the Call of Duty lawsuit between EA, Activision and former Infinity Ward front men Jason West and Vince Zampella. Besides offering a look back at the case as it has progressed so far and what caused it to happen in the first place, Bastian explains why this case is so fascinating to legal eagles. Here's a sample (I encourage you to go and read the whole thing):

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. According to an Ad Age report, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the Modern Warfare 3 leak onto the Internet was his "first real crisis on the job” and forced the company to employ some unorthodox methods to soften the blow. He said that when the news broke the marketing department was called into a half-day meeting with risk management to discuss their options.

As part of his Top Five 2012 predictions feature on IndustryGamers, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich predicted that Grand Theft Auto V will be the top selling game of the year. He even goes so far as to say that it will beat out the next Call of Duty game.

"It goes without saying that GTA V will be one of the year's biggest releases, but I will take it one step farther and say GTA V will be 2012's biggest release," said Divnich.

A California Superior Court judge has told EA that it must defend itself in the $400 million contract-interference suit brought by Activision over Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.

Sony President of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, said that Japanese consumers have become more open to Western games. Of course, anyone following the sales and ratings of Skyrim in Japan already knows this. Speaking to the European PlayStation Blog, Yoshida said that Everybody's Golf and Uncharted: Golden Abyss were the most pre-ordered games in the Vita's Japanese line-up. The system launched last week. Yoshida added that the prominence of the US-developed Uncharted in a line-up dominated almost entirely by Japanese games is an indication of a larger trend in the region.

If you've been banned from Modern Warfare 3 for being a jerk or cheating, you can start playing again in another 5,000 days. If you're a 13-year-old and you catch such a serious ban, you'll be 26.5 years old when you can play again. A serious ban is 5,000 days, or 13.5 years, according to MP1st. But don't worry - these bans are dubbed "temporary" by Infinity Ward.

Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 3 online matchmaking won't work properly in countries that are not supported by Xbox Live, according to a report in Eurogamer. Some customers in countries where the service isn't official are having trouble playing Modern Warfare 3 and there's nothing that can be done about it, according to tweets from Activision and Microsoft to users complaining about problems.

Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit the $ 1 billion sales mark - and it did so just 16 days after its November 8 release. As this IndustryGamers report points out, it hit that milestone faster the top grossing movie in history - James Cameron’s Avatar. Activision also said that it has 30 million players in its worldwide Call of Duty player community.

According to EA's Peter Moore Battlefield has either taken market share from Modern Warfare 3, has added millions of new customers into the mix, or both. The COO of EA insists that Battlefield 3 has successfully taken a slice of Modern Warfare 3’s market share, even though the latest title in Activision's top franchise has become the fastest selling entertainment product of all time.

As with most holiday seasons, games and electronics are becoming hot in December.

The Chicago Tribune and mobile shopping app firm ShopSavvy are tracking the scans of the 10 million active subscribers of ShopSavvy, which allows people to scan barcodes, compare prices and make purchases from their smart phones.

Psychiatrists who Norwegian courts assigned to assess accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik have come to the not-so-shocking conclusion that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After interviewing him 13 times, they say he was in a "psychotic state" during and after the two separate attacks in late July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151. The report is preliminary and still needs to be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.

Infinity Ward, the developers of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, announced via Twitter that it has banned more than 1,600 players online for cheating. Infinity Ward Creative Strategist, Robert Bowling explained via Twitter what was going on.

"Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works."

He went on to answer questions from followers about how to report cheaters from within the game:

If there's one thing you can say about anti-game campaigner and UK Labour MP Keith Vaz, it's that he is tenacious in his fight against games. This week MP Vaz raised his fourth early day motion aimed at violent games, this time specifically targeting Activision's recently released Modern Warfare 3.

Beachhead Studios, the development team in charge of the Call of Duty Elite social and stat-tracking network from Activision, are promising that the service will be fully operational by December 1. In a recent interview with G4TV, vice president of production Daniel Suarez says that he accepts responsibility for the widely reported problems with the service since its launch.

As part of its latest financial results games retailer GameStop revealed that it sold well over a half-a-million Call of Duty Elite subscriptions. The Call of Duty Elite subscriptions were a big hit at GameStop stores, mostly due to the November 8 launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Elite sales certainly helped GameStop's digital business, which the company expects to exceed internal expectations of $450 million for the current fiscal year. So exactly how many Elite subscriptions were sold? According to GameStop, right around 600,000.

Activision says that it "misspoke" earlier this week when it said via Twitter that Call of Duty: Elite support for the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 probably wasn't going to happen.

"We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC," Activision stated via its CoD: Elite Twitter account yesterday.

Activision's social network that launched with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 continues to have problems. Call of Duty Elite, the much vaunted social and stat tracking service is still experiencing problems and continues to prevent players from logging in. The service has been operational sporadically since launch, which Activision has blamed on what it is calling "over subscription to the servers." The service's level of operation is often listed as 'intermittent,' much to the chagrin of players who are paying for it.

Sledgehammer game is finding itself on the business end of internet hate after one of its developers encouraged fans to manipulate the user ratings for Modern Warfare 3 over at Metacritc.com. Sledgehammer Games lead Glen Schofield tweeted to fans asking them to bring the game's paltry 1.7/10 score up. Critics have been generally kind to the game, giving it an average score of 8.9/10.

Because of all the issues at launch Activision announced that it will give one month of free time to all Call of Duty Elite subscribers. Activision's social network built around tracking statistics various Call of Duty games, launched this week with the release of Modern Warfare 3 on Tuesday. At launch the service suffered from a number of issues and continues to be online sporadically.

Modern Warfare 3's day one sales - based on Chart Track and retailer figures - are right around 6.5 million units in the US and UK, raising an estimated $400 million in revenues for Activision. These numbers make Modern Warfare 3 the biggest entertainment launch of all time, beating the previous record held by Call of Duty: Black Ops which had an estimated day one revenue total of $360 million. Of course, this comes as no shock to Activision, whose last two Call of Duty games broke sales milestones in their first day of release as well.

The 31-year old Aurora, Colorado man arrested and charged for disorderly conduct earlier this week after allegedly threatening to shoot Best Buy employees and blow the place up over Modern Warfare 3 purchase problems says that he is shocked at how much attention his story has gotten on the internet and that the words he used were just a figure of speech.

A man threatened to blow up his local game store yesterday after they informed him that they had sold out of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, according to police in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora Police Det. Bob Friel said that 31-year-old Lomorin Sar was arrested early Tuesday morning after he threatened the employees at the Best Buy at North Salida Court.

Analyst Sebastian Colin of Baird Equity Research says that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will break records today.