Greetings, and welcome to the Thursday edition of Hey! Look! Listen! I’m your host Oliver Motok, and last Tuesday, I spent nine straight hours playing Modern Warfare 2.

And I plan to play more tonight, so let’s make this hasty, eh? We actually have some decent news to cover tonight, though, so I promise you it’ll be worth your time.

Modern Warfare 2 Sells Nearly Five Million Copies in 24 Hours

Yep, that’s what I said. This, of course, is according to “internal Activision estimates,” so nothing’s OFFICIALLY official until November’s NPD numbers are revealed. But honestly, this isn’t too difficult to believe.

4.7 million copies sold, amounting to $310 million. In 24 hours. And that’s only counting North America and the UK.

Blowing the horn for all it’s worth, Activision is billing this as “the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment.” And frankly, that may not be far from the truth.

MSNBC Tackles Modern Warfare 2’s “Terrorist” Level

With Modern Warfare 2 breaking sales records and whatnot, it’s obviously caught the eye of non-gaming press as well. MSNBC recently aired a segment featuring Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo, in which the now-infamous “terrorist” level of the game is discuss. It’s actually a pretty decent segment; the two chicks manage not to sound entirely ignorant, and Stephen makes his points nicely, while not coming off as overly-defensive. Watch the clip on Kotaku, but beware of spoilers.

Uncharted 2 Sells Over a Million Copies

Sure, this story may look a little puny compared to Modern Warfare 2’s 34287 units in a single DAY, but seeing that Uncharted 2 is still currently my Game of the Year, it always has a place in my column. Phil Rosenberg, SCE’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, boasted the game’s commercial and critical success at today’s BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference. According to him, Naughty Dog’s masterpiece crossed the one million mark last week.

More power to it; the game deserves every copy sold and every penny earned. Now how ’bout they hurry up and fast-track Uncharted 3?

Nintendo’s Wii Back on Top in October

Ugh. It pains me to report this, but apparently that $50 price cut did Nintendo some good after all. After being defeated by the PS3 in September, the Nintendo Wii was back on top for the month of October.  Here are the NPD hardware numbers, with data being gathered between 10/4 and 10/31:

• Wii – 506,900
• Nintendo DS – 457,600
• PlayStation 3 – 320,600
• Xbox 360 – 249,700
• PSP – 174,600
• PlayStation 2 – 117,800

The Wii sold only 462,800 units in September, while the PS3 sold 491,800. Fairly drastic month-on-month drop for the PS3, but I imagine we’ll see a similar drop for the Wii this month. As for December? That’s anyone’s ball game.

Ubisoft Claims that Prince of Persia Could Surpass Pirates of the Caribbean

Here’s a classic example of a corporate figure promising too much: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guilmont also spoke at the aforementioned BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference. Unsurprisingly, he mentioned the upcoming Prince of Persia movie. Here’s what he had to say:

“What we hear is that I could be stronger than Pirates (of the Caribbean), which did $2.7 billion dollars. I think this will really help our brand to become a major brand in this industry.”

Yeah… while I’m fairly sure at this point that Bruckheimer’s vision for the Prince will be a profitable one, I can’t quite see the movie bringing in over two billion dollars. Perhaps he was referring to the inevitable film franchise as a whole? Who knows, but anyway around it, he’s talking out of his ass.

That’s all for now, folks! Have a lovely evening, and don’t count Modern Warfare 2 Week out yet. I have an editorial brewing that I’m dying to share with you, and word on the street is that Ethos now has his hands on the game.

‘Till next time!

I’m back to assume my rightful position.

I apologize for the ATROCITY that Ethos subjected you to last Friday. I generally keep him safely locked away, only to be let out when needed, but my watchful eyes can only be so… watchful. I can promise it won’t happen again.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Ethos did HLL proud, and who knows, maybe we’ll see him again, so long as he entitles it the “Darling Riddles Needs a Brief Respite” edition.

I saw Where the Wild Things Are last night. It was good. Really good, actually. And this is coming from someone who adored the book as a child. It’s a shockingly faithful adaptation, believe it or not. It makes a lot of necessary projections for the sake of the plot, (needless to say) yet it always manages to maintain the overall feel of the source material. Very, very well done, and one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Mini-movie review aside, let’s dive into the NEWS! Or… the approximation I’ve managed to gather today.

NPD: PlayStation 3 Tops Hardware Charts

Well, it’s not like this is particularly unexpected, but newsworthy nonetheless. In the wake of a redesign and a dramatic price drop, the PlayStation 3 managed to beat out the Xbox 360 AND the Wii in the month of September. However, it’s worth noting that Nintendo’s DS remains on the top. Here are the numbers:

Nintendo DS — 524,200
PlayStation 3 — 491,800
Wii — 462,800
Xbox 360 — 352,600
PlayStation Portable — 190,400
PlayStation 2 — 146,000

For those keeping track, the PS3 sold roughly 210,000 units in the month of August. That’s a sales increase of… a lot. It’ll be interesting to see if Sony can continue this trend through the holiday season. It will also be interesting to see how the recent Wii price drop will affect sales, but we’ll have to wait until next month for the answer to that.

As for software sales, they are as follows:

Halo 3: ODST (360) — 1,520,000
Wii Sports Resort (Wii) — 442,900
Madden NFL 10 (360) — 289,600
Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) — 258,100
The Beatles: Rock Band (360) — 254,000
Madden NFL 10 (PS3) — 246,500
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (360) — 236,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) — 212,500
Guitar Hero 5 (360) — 210,800
The Beatles Rock Band (Wii) — 208,600

Hey, look, ODST is number one! Didn’t see that coming. I note that the PS3 version of Arkham Asylum is still among the top 10, while the 360 version is not. Other than that… yeah… nothing terribly exciting.

Okay, that’s enough numbers for one column. Moving on! (1UP).

More Epic Mickey Stuff from GameInformer

I’ve yet to read the latest issue of GameInformer, which supposedly features quite an in-depth look at the upcoming WII EXCLUSIVE, Epic Mickey. However, the fairly new-ish Game Informer website has quite a bit of exclusive info on the game as well. Click here to check out lots of new artwork, videos, and some tidbits of gameplay info.

And look directly below this sentence to see a disturbing rendition of Donald Duck as the Terminator.

Modern Warfare 2 for the PC Won’t Have Dedicated Servers

Boo-hoo? I suppose if I was a PC gamer, I’d care more, but I’ll be purchasing MW2 for the PS3, thanks very much. However, it seems there’s enough pissed-off PC gamers out there to account for a decent online petition. As of right now, it’s standing at…

Over 116,000 signatures? Christ, that’s a lot more than it was yesterday. Don’t believe me? Look here.

Some Infinity Ward employee who, apparently, goes by the name of FourZeroTwo, wrote a rather lengthy article explaining why the loss of dedicated servers wouldn’t be an issue. Some new backend technology called IWnet will make it all better. I don’t care enough to condense his explanation here; if you do, here’s the link.

Famitsu Gives Bayonetta a Perfect Score

Okay, honestly, it’s hardly even news when Famitsu doles out a perfect score these days. I mean, come on, they gave fucking NINTENDOGS a 40/40. So is it really a big deal if they gave the upcoming super-stylish action game Bayonetta a perfect score?

Well, only because I think they game looks kinda cool. And that Bayonetta chick is definitely hot. And… it’s made by the dude who came up with Devil May Cry. So… yeah. While I doubt that Bayonetta will be a perfect experience by any stretch of the imagination, a 40/40 is a good indication that it’ll be worth a shit.

And BY THE WAY, it’s worth noting that the 40/40 was only given to the Xbox 360 version of the game. As has been established in the past, the PS3 version has some rather glaring technical and graphical issues that aren’t present in the 360 version. However, the PS3 version still managed to garner a 38/40, which is… still quite good. (Kotaku).

I TOLD  you there wasn’t anything interesting today. But I tried, I really did. You gotta give me credit for the effort, if nothing else. I will now go play Brutal Legend, and be happy. Goodnight!