Activision's annual Activate Media Conference kicked off today with a round-up of business to-date and an introduction to the new Asia-Pacific bigwig, Philip Earl. Running us through the usual stats and graphs yelling "we're number one!"�, a couple of stand-out points did stick. Namely that currently the Asia-Pacific region (or APAC) for videogames is not only the biggest, but also the fastest growing (bearing in mind this includes all the Asian countries as well, which is why it's so big, but we are ultimately a part of it, which is kind of cool).

The other point that stood out was that post merger, Activision Blizzard's market value stands at a whopping US$23 billion dollars.

Finally, growth for the two biggest Acti franchises, Call of Duty and Guitar Hero, grew from 1.5 million for the fiscal year 07 to 2.8 million by the end of the fiscal year 08. That's a massive leap and can be attributed to the huge success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the various GH brands.

After all the business hubbub though, we were treated to another live demo of Call of Duty: World At War, the first portion of which was an extended run through of a level I'd already seen at E3 entitled "Eviction". Here, the player is escaping through a building, facing Nazi resistance at every turn. Again I saw the Molotov Cocktail at work, burning both enemy and environment with total abandon. I also got to see the double-barrel shotgun, which is something we missed at E3, and it's looking pretty brutal. CoD: WAW is definitely bloodier and more violent that Modern Warfare.

I'll be getting hands-on with this over the next day or so (Activision are keeping our events quiet), but the one thing I can't stress enough (and something Trog mentioned from what he saw at Leipzig) is World At War is bloody intense. Seriously, there is just so much going on it's incredible.

We then had a bit of a run through with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. This game looks better every time I see it, but it's still not floating my boat thoroughly. The aerial combat looks great, and the draw distance and detail of the city from up high is impressive. But on solid ground and up close it just looks bland and texture-less. The promise of more than a thousand variations in combat moves is cool, and having a morality meter that gauges your alignment with the good guys or the bad guys seems like a good idea, but I'm saving judgement for a hands-on session. We did see a trailer at the end of the demo though that showed off guest star Wolverine all encased in symbiote, which should get Spidey, Venom and Wolverine fans all hot and bothered.

After Spidey we saw a demo of The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, which is celebrating 10-years of the product. Normally I wouldn't really be too bothered about the franchise, but this game actually looks pretty cool. Highly detailed environments stretch far off into the distance, but it's the ability to literally fly anywhere, anytime now that is enticing. The game unabashedly borrows gameplay from such series as Devil May Cry and God of War, but it really does work for it.

After this was Quantum of Solace - which after a heavy live demo I can say I'm super excited for. I'll have a much more detailed write-up for it soon.

So be sure to stay tuned, we have yet to get hands-on with these games as well as look extensively at Guitar Hero World Tour. More soon.