German film composer Hans Zimmer has written some of the best movie scores in recent history. His work includes The Last Samurai, the last two Pirates of the Caribbeans and more recently The Dark Knight. In 2009, he started to dip his hands into the videogame industry and worked with Infinity Ward to write some of the main themes to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Lately, some of the more terrific scores like Halo’s composer Marty O’Donnell, have had the privilege to see their work released in CD form as a soundtrack. If you played the action game, which according to the sales you probably have, you would have noticed the music was on par with most blockbuster films released today. Naturally, a soundtrack release has been set in motion by Activision, which was first tweeted by Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling.

Now Hans Zimmer has confirmed that the Modern Warfare 2 score will be released in stores and hopefully iTunes. Unfortunately, no Specific date has been set, but I’m sure it will be soon rather then later.

The UK version of the Official Xbox Magazine, released the first details of the upcoming reboot of Medal of Honor. While the post on the mag’s official website is more of a tease of the actual article inside the next issue, which hits newsstands on January 7th, it’s the first real information since the trailer debuted at last month’s Video Game Awards show.

According to the publication, the game will be told in the unstable country of Afghanistan. Just from that piece of information, it sounds like the first-person will focus more on today’s Middle Eastern conflict, rather than take the Modern Warfare 2 approach and write a completely different story, that really has nothing to do with today’s politics. One of the reasons for Infinity Ward to take that route was because they didn’t want to make the videogame to ‘preachy.’

When EA sent out the first press release back in December, it read that the title will follow a “badass” main character. We weren’t sure if that meant players would only play as one guy, or if EA planned on having multiple playable characters. Today, OXM confirmed players will play as several Tier 1 Ops soldiers, who were “brought in to help with authenticity.”

A feature that sounds like it could work great in a multiplayer game is the ability to shootout lights and put on night-vision goggles. While they have yet to confirm if it is only in the single player campaign or they plan on using it in an online match, I hope its for both. Imagine playing a team-deathmatch, and a light is shining right on you with swarms of enemies surrounding your area and with the flick of the trigger button, you take out the lights — throw on the night-vision goggles and take out each and everyone of them — and before they know what happened, they’re dead. It’s a simple concept, but it certainly sounds like a fun one.

This next installment of Medal of Honor is naturally going to be compared to the Modern Warfare series, so why not steal a few things from the popular FPS. According to the magazine, there will be sprinting and a knife melee attack, which apparently reminded them a lot like Call of Duty. I just hope the team behind MoH, are also going to try and innovate more, and make it feel like they’re own videogame, instead of making it Modern Warfare 2.5.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isn’t just the biggest game of the year in terms of sales, it was the most pirated games too. Although that isn’t necessarily a shocker, popular titles mean people want them, it’s just a matter if they are willing to pay for them or not. TorrentFreak is the website that did the research and according to them, Modern Warfare 2 was downloaded illegally about 5 million times, which means Activision lost about 300,000,000 bucks because of those pesky pirates.

The site figured about 970,000 of those downloads were for Microsoft’s console the Xbox 360, while about 4.1 million were downloaded for the PC. Even though the sales were much higher for the consoles, people who download games are doing it on a computer, which makes it much easier to run the game on the same machine — hence the numbers of downloads were much higher on the PC.

Some other notable games which were download for “free” were: The Sims 3, Street Fighter IV and Prototype. Although Activision could spin this negative into a positive by handing out a statement that reads that gamers were more willing to play Modern Warfare 2 than EA’s Spore because when that came out in 2008, it was only downloaded 1.7 million times.

The big gaming publication in Japan is Famitsu and when a high-score review comes out, people take note. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has just hit store shelves in the Land of the Rising Son, and the magazine gave it an almost perfect score, which ended up being 39/40. It was one miserably point away from joining 13 other games, that had received a perfect score from Famitsu. Either way, it proved the staff from the mag loved the game.

That turned some heads over in Japan, because the game has sold a little over 100,000 copies, which is quite good considering two things. One, American developed videogames generally don’t sell great in that area of the world. And two, first-person shooters are not a popular genre in a land where role-playing games dominate all others.

According to Kotaku, the PlayStation 3 version sold about 64,000 units, while the Xbox 360 version moved about 42,000 – which isn’t surprising because the PS3 has sold better in Japan.

What does this all mean? Well, for one — it looks like the Japanese market could be starting to move away from the RPG, and might be willing to experience other genres — even if it was created in America. Joy!

Can you imagine playing Modern Warfare 2 and suddenly an alien invasion happens and after you count the dead, they start rise from their grave? Sure it sounds ridiculous, but when Infinity Ward was first writing the script for the sixth installment of Call of Duty — stuff like this was considered. Thankfully it never made it in the final product, but one of the writers discussed the idea of a possible sci-fi COD.

“In the beginning we talked about having things in Modern Warfare 2 like outbreaks, viruses, chemical warfare, and even outlandish things such as aliens and the living dead,” says Jesse Stern. ” We worked our way through it before we finally ended up with a more grounded version of the real world as it’s depicted in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And as we were kicking around scenarios for conflict, we kept stumbling into things that were happening in real life, which was honestly unintentional.”

This might sound far-fetch, but if you remember some rumors that started to emerge back in 2008, it starts to make sense. Sites were reporting that Infinity Ward was actually making an unnamed sci-fi title. The news supposedly came from an insider from the studio. “We are currently working on a new sci-fi title, we cannot release any more information as of yet, we may or may not announce it at E3,” said the anonymous source. Of course E3 came and went, and nothing was ever mentioned. One and a half years later, Infinity Ward released one of the most successful games of all time — and didn’t include zombies.

The sales numbers for the first five days of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have been released by Activision. According to the publisher, the hit first person shooter is the largest opening for any form of entertainment and made $550 million, beating the worldwide release of Harry Potter And the Half-Blood Prince, which made $394 million.

Before Modern Warfare 2 hit store shelves, analysts knew it was going to be huge and some even thought it would make about $500 million, but in the first week — not in the first five days. On top of that, it made $50 million extra than expected.

“In just five days of sell through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon,” said Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard, Inc. “The title’s success redefines entertainment as millions of consumers have chosen to play Modern Warfare 2 at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media.”

After the jump, check out some stats that the company revealed about what the popular videogame did, when compared to other forms of entertainment in the first few days. Although, you should keep in mind that this game average cost of each consumer who bought the title, paid a lot than any other piece of media listed after the break. Sure, it made the money — but more people are NOT experiencing it.

–  The largest reported five-day opening worldwide box office gross figures, held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($394 million)

Now, I know a lot of you might have already seen this clip of a gamer throwing a random knife into the air and hitting his enemy in an online game of Modern Warfare 2, but I’m posting it incase you didn’t. With only a few seconds left in a multiplayer, a player happens to grab his throwing knife — tossed it over a house and managed to hit a solider, accidentally of course.

Because it was the “victory kill,” each person playing was able to see the knife fly through the air and watched it nail the opponent. Thankfully, whoever was playing also recored his match, uploaded onto the Internet, so he could share his accomplishment to the world.

On November 10, 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released to the public and according to Activision, it had sold 4.7 million copies, smashing what was the previous record for the top selling game for one day, which was Grand Theft Auto IV and sold about a million less. According to the publisher, Modern Warfare raked in an astonishing $310 million in both the US and UK combined.

Over one weekend in 2008, “The Dark Knight” was released by Warner Bros. and the company saw the film break a box office record with a little over $158 million. So one could say this is the largest opening ever for any industry inside the entertainment world, when it comes to gross revenue. But before gamers go crazy and start spreading false rumors and say the gaming business is bigger than film, keep in mind that Modern Warfare 2 sells for at LEAST $60 and a movie ticket in 2008 was $7.18, according to boxofficemojo.com.

So while Modern Warfare 2 did make more gross revenue when compared to The Dark Knight, more people saw the film… a lot more.

Here at /gamer, we would like to wish all of you a very happy Modern Warfare 2 day. Today is a day that could easily be considered better than Christmas. Hopefully all of you on the east coast have gone to a retail store and had success trying to find a copy at midnight and you didn’t have to wait too long — although, that sounds doubtful. Up top is a picture one of our readers sent us from his local Gamestop and as you can tell, there is a crap-load of customers waiting in line, and it was taken long before the doors opened.

Activision along with Infinity Ward have released the launch trailer for their highly anticipated game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the clip above, Activision tries to pump up the viewer by blasting some Eminem as the emotional music to one of the last trailers we’ll see for the first-person shooter. The music choice happens to be from one of the main artist in DJ Hero, which happens to be published by Activision and that probably is not a coincidence.

One thing the trailer proves, is how far Infinity Ward wanted to take the series with this next installment. Not only is the video nuts with the on screen action, but judging by the trailer, it looks as though the player will literally experience the war from the depths of the ocean, to the final frontier, which is space obviously. I’m not sure if playing as an astronaut is going to be possible, but observing what the studio has done in the past — I wouldn’t be surprised.

We’ll find out soon enough when Modern Warfare 2 drops on stores shelves this Tuesday.