Activision's Q4 masterplan

Activision has announced an impressive list of new titles planned for the second half of this year - confirming that Quake IV will be here by Christmas.

As will Call of Duty 2, X-Men Legends 2, True Crime 2, Tony Hawk's Underground 2, sorry, 3, and a new Shrek title. Not to mention Lionhead's The Movies and an as yet untitled game from Tony Hawk developer Neversoft, which Activision CEO Ron Doornink described as "the biggest game of next year" as long ago as last summer.

Speaking in a conference call, Doornink hinted that Activision also has a few next-gen projects in the pipeline.

"Excitement is building around the introduction of the next-generation consoles, the first of which could launch as early as this year-end," he said, obviously referring to the Xbox 360, looking likely to launch in September.

"We can't publicly announce our [next-gen] titles, but we are excited at what we see that the techonology offers," Doornink went on.

"Our line-up for the next generation will easily be the biggest, strongest, and most exciting one in Activision's history."

The publisher has also announced record results for the 2005 financial year, with revenues up 48 per cent to $1.4bn and profits up by 78 per cent to $138 million - which amounts to an awful lot of copies of THUG 2 and Spider-Man 2 for PSP.

Commenting on the results, Bank of America securities analyst Gary Cooper said Activision could definitely win the battle for consumers' Christmas cash.

"Similar to EA, Activision back-end weighted its annual revenue and earnings, making the 2005 holiday officially crowded," he noted.

"Despite that, we believe Activision enjoys higher odds of achieving its 3Q06 guidance than EA does. This is due to the company's successful selling catalogue and proven well-branded games accompanied by conservative guidance, in our opinion."

Well there you go.