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.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick takes a jab at EA, saying at the recent Reuters Media Summit that it will be LucasArts - and not Electronic Arts - that makes out like a bandit when MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is released. At least he admits that the Star Wars-themed MMORPG will be successful.

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.

Vivendi revealed that it has sold 35 million shares of its Activision Blizzard holdings, reducing its stake by right around 3 percent to 60 percent. Vivendi did not disclose what it sold the block of shares for. A Reuters estimate based on the opening price on Tuesday morning of $12.18 per share puts sale at around $426 million USD.

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

According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, Activision's Modern Warfare 3 will sell ten percent more copies than Call of Duty Black Ops. He estimates that the game will rake in $1.1 billion in its first six weeks on store shelves. Pachter also predicts that the Call of Duty Elite premium service could pull in up to 4 million subscribers by the end of the year. Of course, he probably didn't know at the time that it wouldn't be available for PC users. That may throw a wrench into the gears of his calculation machine.

If you somehow managed (by hook or by crook) to get a copy of Modern Warfare and are trying to play it online via Xbox Live, you'll be treated to a ban. The game officially launches November 8, but apparently Microsoft has noticed that some Xbox Live users have the game and are trying to play it online. Those people are having their accounts banned.

Just days before the worldwide release of Modern Warfare 3 (November 8), Activision has decided that its Call of Duty Elite service will not launch on PC alongside the game - according to an MCV report. The company did not reveal when it expects the service to be ready either.

If the fight between EA's Battlefield 3 and the Call of Duty series is a popularity contest than EA is losing, according to online usage stats released by Xbox Live's Major Nelson. According to his list of most popular game being online for the week, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 are more popular than Battlefield 3. This might give EA some pause considering that these are very old games beating a game just barely released this month.

Blizzard Entertainment will host a series of special charity auctions featuring server-blade hardware that was originally used during the early days of World of Warcraft. The money generated from the auctions will go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, one of the world's premier centers for the research and treatment of pediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. The auction consists of the original HP Blade System servers that once housed hundreds of different realms across North America and Europe.

A letter hand-delivered to Sussex County Community College President Paul Mazur on February 14 has managed to net the school $35,000 dollars for a web domain. The story begins on that date when the new president of the community college received a letter offer of $7,500 for the domain name the school paid $5 to reserve: Skylanders.com. Skylanders happens to be the name of SCCC's athletic teams, the only college or high school with that team nickname in the country, in fact. It is also the name of an upcoming game from Activision.

An article in Forbes calls a new promotion from Pepsi and Activision "nothing short of unholy." The promotion, "Rank Up XP," gives Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players extra time in-game to earn double experience by purchasing Pepsi products (Doritos and Mountain Dew) and redeeming codes from the packaging. The experience comes in various allotments of time; a 20 oz Mountain Dew will earn players 15 minutes, for example.

According to Activision its Call of Duty fan event, Call of Duty XP, was a smashing success and the second most viewed televised event in history. Speaking to IndustryGamers, Activision Publishing's top executive Eric Hirshberg said that they were delighted with how the event turned out and proud of the milestones it earned.

Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vincent Zampella finally have a trial date in their long-running lawsuit with Activision. Their court battle with Activision over royalties allegedly owed from the Call of Duty series is set to go before a judge in Los Angeles on May 7, 2012.

"I’m really looking forward to having our day in Court," said Zampella in conversation with Forbes.

Zampella and West founded a new studio, Respawn Entertainment, in 2010, signed a deal with EA, and have hired over 60 employees.

Activision has prevailed in a fight with the owners of ModernWarfare3.com, a website that first came to light in July because it lampooned the Call of Duty series and Activision - and redirected visitors to the official Battlefield 3 site. Clearly a violation of naughty internet rule 370.

Ignoring calls from Activision to tone down its rhetoric, EA Label boss Frank Gibeau says that - for the first time - the Call of Duty series will face the first real competition it's had "in a long time."

Gibeau bragged that DICE's upcoming FPS shooter Battlefield 3 will "definitely" take market share away from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 this Christmas.

According to Activision CEO Eric Hirschberg, his company has sold in excess of 18 million Call of Duty: Black Ops map packs to date, and the average Black Ops player spent $76. That is a pretty impressive number by anyone's standards. The sales figures were released by Hirschberg during an investor event in Los Angeles yesterday. While it's a dramatic improvement over the last Call of Duty game (World at War sold 9 million map packs at $10 each with an average spend of $68 per player in its first nine months of release) DLC for the series always does well.

Valve Software announced today that Activision's next Call of Duty game will use Steamworks. On a related note, over the weekend at PAX in Seattle, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford revealed that the PC version of its role-playing game shooter, Borderlands, would add Steamworks support with a new update. The PC version of MW3 will be powered with Steamworks for both the digital and retail versions of the game. It will support offline play, auto-updating, achievements, and dedicated servers at launch. Naturally Steamworks adds a DRM layer as well.

EA's trash-talking to Activision about its Call of Duty franchise may be frowned upon in some circles, but Scott Steinberg of TechSavvy Global sees it as a clever ploy on the company's part to draw attention to its Battlefield series.

While Activision's new CEO said earlier this week at Gamescom that EA should stop trash talking Call of Duty because it "hurt the entire industry," one of EA's top executives has a different point of view. The Battlefield publisher threw some verbal jabs at Activision's former AAA franchises and predicted that the Call of Duty franchise would collapse "In 2-3 Years."

"Welcome to the big leagues Eric," EA spokesperson Jeff Brown said in a comment issued to Kotaku addressed directly to Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision.

Activision's CEO of publishing, Eric Hirschberg, has publicly criticized EA for what he calls "mud-slinging tactics" over the rivalry between the Modern Warfare series and Battlefield 3. According to Eurogamer, Hirschberg took some time out of his Gamescom keynote to encourage Activision's competitors to focus on development, rather than making negative comments in the press.

Activision went out of its way to say that its marquee AAA franchise, Call of Duty, has nothing to fear from Facebook. While its biggest Rival, Electronic Arts has invested billions of dollars in the social gaming space, Activision has no interest in tackling the space, and isn't concerned one bit with what is going on there. The company says that focusing its resources on a few core franchises for traditional gaming platforms is the right path to take.

Activision's Band Hero is the focus of a new lawsuit filed by Maroon 5 front man and coach on NBC's hit reality series "The Voice" Adam Levine.

Levine filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, claiming that the game exploits his name and likeness beyond what he had agreed to when he signed his deal with Activision. According to the suit Levine inked a deal to allow Activision to use the Maroon 5 song "She Will Be Loved" for the game, and performed the song for motion-capture so his avatar could be created.

Blizzard Entertainment announced that its virtual pet sale has raised more than $1.9 million for Japan's earthquake relief efforts. Thanks to the generosity of World of Warcraft players, around the world who purchased the in-game pet, the Cenarion Hatchling, the company has managed to raise nearly $2 million for continued efforts to help those in Japan affected by earthquakes and tsunamis that hit the country earlier this year. More from Blizzard: