So, erm, Call of Duty Elite is quite popular. According to the latest stats, the service now boasts 10 million users, 2 million of whom are premium members.

Released as part of Activision’s quarterly financial report, the stats offer up a few more enormo-numbers worth noting. Apparently, as of 31st March the CoD franchise had amassed 40m monthly active users, with Modern Warfare 3 players alone racking up 1.6 billion hours of online gameplay.

Despite the insanity of those numbers, however, it still wasn’t enough to save Activision from a year-on-year drop in revenue. The publisher may have added a $1.17 billion diamond encrusted Killer Whale to its money swimming pool in the last three months, but that figure is down from last year’s $1.45 billion. The poor things.

Putting a brave face on the fact that he may have to cut down on the gold-plated Ferrero Rochers, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stressed that the company’s performance was "better than expected" and that it has strong prospects going forward.

"On May 15 Blizzard Entertainment will release the highly anticipated Diablo 3 and we are proud to report that pre-orders for the game worldwide have set a new record for Blizzard," he said.

"For the remainder of 2012 and beyond, our product pipeline includes some of the most innovative games we have ever developed for our established franchises, including Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and all new MMORPG game, as well as Activision Publishing's Skylander's Giants, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and a new universe from Bungie.”

He said some other stuff too, but it was really fucking boring.



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