Todd McFarlane is a name that is extremely well-known in the game industry — both as a visual artist and Spawn creator who has lent his talent to games, and for his toy company, which has produced a number of action figures based on popular properties. Which I’m happy to say I own pretty much every single one of. Gamasutra …

You may not know the name, but if you’re still rocking on the PlayStation 2, there’s a good chance you’ve played their games. Activision today announced that they’ve purchased Budcat Creations, the developer behind the PS2 versions of Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, and Guitar Hero World Tour. And what’s their first assignment now that they’re fully owned by …

This has me kind of worried to be honest. Kotaku report that: "Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, noted during today's quarterly earnings conference call that the publisher may begin charging for user-generated songs uploaded through Guitar Hero World Tour's GH Tunes service. Kotick has previously stated that GH Tunes has the "potential" to be one of the 'credible alternatives to iTunes.' " I want to jump the gun here and say that Activision are just seeing nothing but dollar signs but we have yet to see if any of the users will be able to benefit from their own creations. If they don't then I am not going to be a happy camper. Profiting directly from content created by users is something that goes a little overboard in my opinion and the fact that the songs won't even have lyrics makes me wonder if it will all be worth it. As reported by Kotaku, Activision knows exactly how much money can be made from subscription based services such as World of Warcraft but I don't see this as a step forward for gamers at all. The content should be free and available to anyone who buys the game. If something like this catches on you could see scenarios were all publishers start charging for the ability to access user created content.

  Having gained a stable subscription revenue base from World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard may look to monetize some of its other titles through subscriptions — like Guitar Hero, CEO Bobby Kotick said today. Last Updated: November 6, 2008

We had a quick meeting about this story this morning and were debating whether or not this video was really worthy of being posted… the meeting took about 30 seconds and went along the lines of Q: Is there any reason at all to post this? A: hot woman, very little clothing, it’s Heidi Klum dammit… So there you have it, …

MTV is preparing a major announcement this morning involving an unprecedented partnership to develop a global music project with Apple Corps Ltd. (not the iPod guys, but the multimedia corporation founded by the Beatles). Nobody knows for sure what they’re planning to reveal, but considering the parties involved and their history, we can probably come up with a pretty decent …

As most of you know, Activision have already announced that they are looking to triple the amount of Guitar Hero titles by 2010. It seems that to reach this goal, Activision is going to be releasing themed games instead of the usual titles with various songs and artists. Last Updated: September 18, 2008

It's no secret that Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which are two powerful music franchises, are still in a war for market supremacy and will do whatever they can to prove that their product is better than the oppositions'. That is why Activision has triumphantly announced that Guitar Hero is outselling Rock Band by 6 to 1. The reason apparently being that they have access to 30% of the world’s music through Universal and that they have 2000 people working on Guitar Hero titles. That compared to the couple hundred people that work on Rock Band. Both are very valid reasons, but what about the fact that Australia and South Africa have yet to get Rock Band 1 on their shores even though Rock Band 2 has already been released. It wouldn’t change the figures drastically but it would give a better representation of exactly how well Guitar Hero franchise compares to Rock Band. It is still a very impressive statistic to have on your side and I don’t blame them for showing off.