As everyone knows, going global is important. Will Kassoy, Activision's senior vice president of Global Brand Management, claims that "it's no exception in the video game category." Our category had explosive growth last year, he told an audience at the MI6 Conference in San Francisco. 43 percent growth, he says. "1999 was the last time we had over 20 percent growth."

He shows a chart of the top 10 best-selling games from the year 2000. In America, we saw titles like Madden. In the U.K., it was WWE. In France, Pokemon, in Germany Diablo. "One thing stands out for me when I look at this slide: there's a lot of differences," says Kassoy of the slide that depicts a wide variety of sales-based regional tastes in games.

"And now there isn't," says Kassoy, revealing a slide showing the top 10 sellers for 2007 in the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany. There aren't four distinct titles. Call of Duty 4, in fact, is in the top 10 in all four major territories.

"There's a very clear trend that, in calendar year 2007, 40 percent of sales took place outside of U.S.," says Kassoy, who goes on to predict that by the end of this hardware cycle, 60 percent of sales will be outside U.S. for the game category.

The growth rate for Europe is growing, too. Kassoy sketches the market size as $10.4B in Europe, against $10.1B in the U.S. He admits the exchange rate has a little bit to do with that, but not much when you look at the trend.

Furthermore, the DS market in Europe is larger than ever. "Handhelds have never been as successful in Europe as they are today," states Kassoy, who also talks about what he sees as emerging market segments: MMOs and downloadable content.

Kassoy tells the anecdote of a recent lunch with Activision-Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick, where Kassoy is preaching his gospel of "Thinking global, acting local," and immediately, Kotick coins a new word to describe the practice: "Glocalization."

Kassoy goes on to note that, within Activision, they treat brand management as a global operation, with global Profit and Loss responsibility. It's key, he says, to incentivize the marketers.

"We currently do not have a strong central European organization," Kassoy told the audience, but that's on purpose. By keeping the teams small, Activision wants the people who do cover those territories to be empowered, to own the area, and continue as experts in the region.

Kassoy concludes the talk with a rapid post-mortem of the worldwide launch of Call of Duty 4. It boils down to intense planning and coordination. The game, for example, appeared simultaneously on the cover of twenty different enthusiast magazines.

Going forward, Kassoy believes this is a global world, and that we'll continue to see the importance of rolling-out products everywhere, and instantly.