Speaking at a recent Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in California, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick provided some interesting food for thought to the analysts and investors in attendance. Kotick reiterated his claim that it would take at least a half billion dollars to seriously challenge World of Warcraft (something Trion's Lars Buttler doesn't buy) in the online space and then he proceeded to hint that one of Activision's most successful franchises, Call of Duty, could actually be headed in the MMO direction.

"When you think about other properties that we own and control like Call of Duty, and what would be the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively multiplayer environment...how do you monetize that?" he mused.

As for Activision's other mega-popular franchise Guitar Hero, which Kotick labeled "the best-selling game that we have ever had," he said that his company (under the Vivendi merger) plans to leverage Blizzard's "institutional expertise" to bring PC editions of Guitar Hero to the "roughly 300,000 game rooms between China and Korea."

Furthermore, Kotick referred to the guitar controllers as instruments repeatedly and he talked about "product categories that are line extensions" to Guitar Hero. Considering that Activision already trademarked "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain" and there's been much conjecture that Guitar Hero will go the way of Rock Band by adding other instruments, these comments from Kotick only fuel speculation.

Thanks to GameSpot.