Tuesday’s launch of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” was already being forecast as the entertainment event of the year, but even that may have been underselling things.

ELSPA reports that first-day sales of the game hit 1.23 million copies in the U.K. That’s roughly twice the number that “Grand Theft Auto IV” posted last April. Ben Schachter, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech (and one of the brightest guys covering this industry) notes that if that 2:1 ratio is equaled in the U.S., it’s possible the game sold over 7 million units in a single day. That would work out to $420 million in revenue – the biggest one-day haul in the entertainment industry’s history.

Following the math, “MW2” could see first week sales of 11.7 million – which would blow out all of the economic models for the game. (Analysts were looking for sales of 12 million or so copies in the entire fourth quarter.)

Looks like the millions Activision spent on marketing the game during the NBA finals and Sunday Night Football have paid off in spades. 

id Software make shooters. It essentially invented the genre, in fact. So you might not expect the team there to be particularly enthusiastic over the introduction of motion control sensors like Microsoft’s Project Natal and Sony’s motion controller.

Technically, you’d be both right and wrong.

John Carmack, id’s co-founder and game engine wizard, says the upcoming devices mark the beginning of a new era of gameplay.

“I do believe that changes in I/O devices are going to make the biggest changes in gaming experiences going forwards,” he says. “However, most of these I/O devices do not add much value for games that are not explicitly designed for them. It has to be something like the Wii.”

In other words, while he’s a believer in motion control, he doesn’t see a big immediate payoff for Microsoft or Sony.

“I don’t expect much coming from the add-ons to the current generation – but I’ll be very interested to see what’s built into next generation machines,” he says.

As for action games – particularly the first person shooter – he thinks motion controllers will have less of an impact. The devices, he says, can open up new styles and genres of gaming, but will have a harder time altering the way people play certain existing game types.

“Great technology doesn’t help a game that’s not built around that technology,” he says. “FPS games are part of a fairly evolved genre that isn’t going to benefit from these.”

 

Warren Spector wants to be clear: Mickey Mouse wasn’t always as boring as he is today. And it wasn’t a deliberate move to rob the mouse of his mischievous nature. It’s just the way of the cartoon world.

“It happens to every cartoon character,” he says. “They all begin as dangerous, mischievous things, then they start to settle down and become more realistic – and the way they’re drawn becomes more realistic. Eventually, they move into a nice suburban home and get some nephews who are unexplained. Then someone comes along and reminds them that they’re this anarchist thing and the cycle begins again.”

What Mickey had that held that off for a while was Walt Disney. The company founder loved his creation and viewed Mickey as his alter ego. That kept the changes minute enough that Mickey was able to establish a lasting identity.

Spector’s hoping that “Epic Mickey” marks the beginning of a new cycle – a Mickey reboot, if you will. He’s lobbying Disney to use this re-imagined character in arenas other than games, though hasn’t received any commitments on that yet.

“Realistically, all we’re trying to do is make Mickey the game hero he deserves to be,” he says. “In my secret heart of hearts, I would love to see a movie or a comic book - and I plant that seed everywhere I can and see if takes root. But if it never happens, that’s fine.”

id Software might want to brace for some rage over “Rage”.

John Carmack, co-founder and technical wizard of the developer, says the company doesn’t plan to support dedicated servers for the multiplayer component of “Rage,” id’s upcoming new action game.

“It’s not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don’t think we will have dedicated servers,” he says.

Infinity Ward made the same decision for “Modern Warfare 2” and has been facing a massive backlash among its fans. The inevitable online petition has gathered over 183,000 signatures and even the developer has acknowledged the backlash.

“Modern Warfare 2” will use a matchmaking setup powered by IWNET for online play. It’s too early to say what Rage will use, but Carmack indicated he believed the servers are something of a remnant of the early days of PC gaming.

That said, he realizes the affinity many PC gamers have for them – and is glad “Rage” won’t be leading the charge away from them.

“The great thing is we won’t have to be a pioneer on that,” he says. “We’ll see how it works out for everyone else.”

Rage, meanwhile, appears to be on track for a 2010 release. But you might want to find a comfortable chair as you wait for the next “Doom” game.

“It’s looking realistic,” says Carmack. “We are on a crunch right now to do presentations for console first party manufacturers, so things are cooking along well for ‘Rage’. ‘Doom 4’ is obviously a bit further out.”

Junction Point Studios has done some incredible work with animating Mickey Mouse for “Epic Mickey”. The screen shots, honestly, don’t begin to do the game justice. To prove this, Warren Spector showed off some old cartoon footage of the mouse last week running alongside the game’s Mickey model mimicking the cartoon. In some instances, it was impossible to tell the difference.

But there’s something you might be expecting from the cartoons that will never, ever happen in the game. Mickey, who has become a rather chatty rodent over the years, won’t speak a word in the game.

Don’t misunderstand: There’s dialogue, but it appears as text bubbles – not audibly. And that’s a very deliberate move.

“I made the creative decision that characters wouldn’t talk in the Cartoon Wasteland,” says Spector. “It was entirely a creative decision because [he begins speaking in a high-pitched Mickey voice] As soon as I start doing this, I’ve lost most of my potential audience. [resumes natural voice] If I’m trying to re-introduce this character to an audience, there are certain connotations with that voice that I’m going to have a hard time overcoming. ”

While full voice is certainly possible on the Wii hardware, Spector says he has instead decided to use those system resources for other elements of the game.

 

After literally years of silence surrounding Warren Spector’s “Epic Mickey,” Disney and Spector are finally talking about the project – and they have a lot to say.

The company held a launch event recently in London, unveiling new details and offering a peek behind the thought process at how the game came to be. Over the next couple of days, The Cut Scene will be looking at what might be and what might have been with this reintroduction of the world’s most famous rodent.

Spector actually didn’t head to Disney looking to work on a Mickey game. He had two of his own projects at Junction Point Studios that he was looking to find a publisher for.

One, he says, was “a big, BIG fantasy game that I had been wanting to do for about 15 years. My wife and I created a world and a whole story arc for DC comics. They decided not to pick it up. I loved this world and the characters we had created.”

The other was a near-future science fiction-themed game. It was, hints Spector, a spiritual successor to “Deus Ex” in many ways.

Given the family audience Microsoft is targeting with Project Natal, it seems natural that Disney would have a game ready for the system’s launch. That’s not a sure bet, though, says Graham Hopper, president of Disney Interactive Studios. “That’s an interesting question we’re deciding now,” he says. “For us, doing something just to be there [at launch] doesn’t have a lot of appeal. There’s an impetus to be first just for the sake of being first, but we won’t do that.”

That said, there’s plenty of internal enthusiasm for the motion-based controller. And the founder of Bungie Software is leading the charge on it.

Alex Seropian joined Disney last month to act as a ‘coach,’ of sorts to the expanding internal staff of developers. One of his first meetings upon joining was related to Natal and where Disney stood with the peripheral.

Disney’s other ace-in-the-hole, developer Warren Spector, won’t be contributing to any Natal-driven efforts in the near future as he continues work on “Epic Mickey” for the Wii, but it’s a safe bet he’ll be looking closely at the device once that game is out the door.

“I’m completely convinced that gesture controls are the future of gaming,” he says.

Ubisoft’s video game adaptation of “James Cameron’s Avatar” has a launch date. The publisher has confirmed that the title will come out on all platforms Dec. 1 – 2.5 weeks before the film.

The film crew and game maker have been working closely together on the game, doing their best to integrate Cameron’s vision for the film. It was Cameron’s lobbying, in fact, that led Ubisoft to make the game available in stereoscopic 3D – a bold move, but ultimately a pretty useless one, since there aren’t a lot of TVs on the market (and even fewer in homes) that will take advantage of the effects.

While movie-goers are excited about Cameron’s first cinematic release since “Titanic,” the gaming world hasn’t exactly been clamoring for the title. It will likely do well, as followers of the director and fans of the movie grab a copy – but don’t be surprised if the game fails to crack the year’s Top 10 when they’re calculated at the end of December. 

The Xbox 360 is losing one of the bigger exclusive weapons in its home entertainment arsenal.  Netflix has announced that it will begin instant streaming of movies via the PlayStation 3 next month.

As an added incentive, PS3 owners won’t have to pay the premium that Xbox Live customers do. (Netflix streaming is currently only available to Xbox Live Gold members – who pay a $50 annual subscription fee.)

The PS3 currently has a much smaller installed base of customers than the Xbox 360 – but is hardly slouching. 9 million US households own the machine, which is roughly 2 million shy of Netflix’s total subscribers.

Watching streaming films via the PS3 will be a little different than it’s done on Xbox. Users will need a special Blu-ray disc (which will be made available for free – request one here) in their system to watch. As with the Xbox version, users will be able to put together a queue via the Web or directly on their console.

It’s a notable expansion for Netflix, which the company teased last week during its earnings call. The question now is when Netflix and Nintendo will tie the knot, since the window of exclusivity has obviously ended. Microsoft’s reaction will also be one worth watching.

Will the company make Netflix streaming available to all customers for free? Will it enhance the service – or might it have another streaming service up its sleeve (perhaps Hulu?) to roll out as a complementary streaming service some time in 2010?

September was the month things were supposed to turn around for the video game industry. Analysts were forecasting increases of up to 25 percent from the 2008 numbers – but the economy and the buying public gave them an ugly surprise.

Sales were up overall in September, but just barely. Game sales jumped 5 percent, thanks almost exclusively to “Halo 3: ODST”. But hardware sales were down 6 percent, even with price cuts by all three manufacturers.

Despite this, you won’t hear Sony complaining too loudly. For the first time since it hit the market in 2006, the PS3 beat the Wii and Xbox 360 in sales (though the Nintendo DS topped everyone for the sixth consecutive month).

PS3 sales more than doubled from August, while the Wii and 360 both saw increases of over a 60 percent.

While some people were skeptical that a Master Chief-less “Halo” title might not have the appeal of other series installments, the game managed to sell over 1.5 million copies, making it the sixth best-selling launch in the industry’s history.

(The full software sales figures are listed after the break.)