Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates is being subpoenaed by Erik Estavillo, whose nickname is “professional plaintiff.” This isn’t the first time that Estavillo filed a crazy video-game lawsuit. About a month ago Estavillo sued Microsoft for $75,000″ for “pain and suffering damages.” His Xbox 360 failed and displayed the notorious Red Ring of Death (RRoD) on the power button. Estavillo claims that the Xbox was only one of two ways that he socialized and the other was online gaming. This is because of his agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and other stress disabilities.

The $75,000 damages fine “is in relation to the stress put on the plaintiff having to find a way to acquire a new Xbox 360 system and the sadness he will have in the meantime of finding one he can afford. Not to mention all of the lost data that is unrecoverable such as game saves and downloadable content,” according to a complaint pulled by The Seattle Pi.

Estavillo subpoenaed Bill Gates to find out how many Xbox 360 consoles in total have seen the Red Ring of Death. He also wants to know how many of those consoles have been fixed over the past 3 years. And of course he also wanted to know how many Xbox Live users have been banned for piracy.

“YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear in the UnitedStates (sic) district court at the time, date, and place set forth below to testify at a hearing of trial in this civil action,” stated the subpoena. Estavillo previously sued Nintendo for $5,000 over the disabling of cheats in a Wii update because it interfered with his “pursuit of happiness.”

In another lawsuit, Estavillo filed a lawsuit against Sony because his PlayStation Network user name was banned for trolling. He believes that this was in violation of his First Amendment rights.

Another one of Estavillo’s notable lawsuits is against Activision Blizzard, the creator of the video game series World of Warcraft. The lawsuit was for $1 million and he alleges that this game caused his agoraphobia, panic disorder, depression, Crohn’s disease, and obsessive compulsive disorder. In that lawsuit, he subpoenaed actress Winona Ryder and Depeche Mode founder Martin Gore. Winona was subpoenaed because of her interest in the book The Catcher in the Rye, a novel about alienation. Gore was subpoenaed because he is supposedly an expert on alienation.

Estavillo told the Seattle Pi that now he is done with all subpoenas and lawsuits.

When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released, the game made $310 million in 24 hours and $600 million in 5 days. The first question that might be on a financial analyst’s minds may be, “how much of that was profit?” It turns out that the game costed roughly $40-$50 million to produce. For a video game this is a massive budget. But it took only 2 years for Activision to put together. Gran Turismo 5 took about 5 years and costed about $60 million to put together so far as a comparison.

The launch budget of the game was about $200 million which is about the same cost as a summer movie. That $200 million included producing, distributing, and marketing. “My goal was to create a launch that would compare very favorably to the biggest box offices of all time,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with the L.A. Times. It looks like Kotick met his goal based on the sales the game made thus far.

On September 1, Activision Blizzard is releasing Guitar Hero 5.  About eight days later The Beatles: Rock Band will be released.  There is going to be some intense rivalry because Guitar Hero 5, there will be some solid cameos such as Carlos Santana.  But The Beatles: Rock Band will be the first game to ever feature any Beatles’ songs.

Considering that Guitar Hero is hitting its 5th release, this is a major milestone.  And The Rock Band franchise… not too shabby either.  Guitar Hero 5 will have 85 new songs by 83 artists.  There is also a “Party Play” mode where players can jump in and out of different songs with a single button. Guitar Hero 5 will also allow more than one person to play the guitar at the same time instead of four different instruments.

In the previous games, users could pay to download additional songs.  Most of those songs could be ported over to GH:5 too.  About 152 of the 158 additional songs from the last game are available in the new game too.  However there will be an “nominal re-licensing fee” for adding previously downloaded songs into the new game.

[via CNET]

Activision Blizzard has reported their Q2 2009 reports earlier this week.  The reports were as Wall Street expected.  The revenue guidance for 2009 lowered from $4.3 billion to $4.05 billion due to the delay of titles Singularity and StarCraft 2.  Analysts were expecting $4.9 billion in total revenue for the year.

Revenue for the quarter was $801 million which is what analysts were expecting.  EPS was $0.08 and analysts expected $0.07.  Revenue was generated by strong sales in titles such as PROTOTYPE, Guitar Hero World Tour, Call of Duty: World at War, and the Wolverine line of games.

[via BusinessInsider]

Yesterday the Beatles made an appearance at the E3 gaming event and hyped up The Beatles: Rock Band, but they will find themselves competing against Activision Blizzard’s Guitar Hero 5.  The advantage that the Guitar Hero franchise has over Rock Band is a release date that is one week before.  The exact date of Guitar Hero 5’s release is September 1.

Guitar Hero 5 will be available on the XBox 360, the Sony Playstation 2 and Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii.  Some of the songs on the game include Blue Orchid (The White Stripes), Sympathy for the Devil (The Rolling Stones), All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan), and Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash).

The instruments for the game include a mic, guitars, drums, and the bass.  Any combination of the instruments can be used at once.  Before there was a one-instrument per player restriction.

[via CNET]

Dan Rosensweig is the former COO of Yahoo! Inc. and former President of CNET.  Now Rosensweig is getting into gaming by joining Activision Blizzard Inc. to head up the Guitar Hero franchise.  Rosensweig quit Yahoo! in 2006 after working there for five years in product development and marketing.  Rosensweig left around the same time Terry Semel did.

Coincidentally Activision’s current CEO Bobby Kotick served on the Yahoo! board of directors up until last year.  When Rosensweig left Yahoo!, he worked at Quadrangle Group.  Quadrangle is a private equity firm based out of New York. Rosensweig was the Silicon Valley representation of the firm.

Rosensweig’s responsibilities at Activision will be to maintain the whole Guitar Hero franchise.  The franchise was put together by Activision’s Red Octane unit and Neversoft studios.  Guitar Hero has had three blockbuster games in the franchise, but some analysts believe that the growth for music games may be slowing down.  Rosenweig needs to make sure Guitar Hero does not become obsolete.

“With a platform and content that universally engages a wide range of audiences, Guitar Hero has incredible growth potential,” stated Rosensweig. “I look forward to continuing to develop Guitar Hero into an even more successful enterprise.”

[via LAT]