Kotick’s strategy has paid off big time. In 1999, Activision’s Neversoft studio came up with Tony Hawks’ pro skater, which broke through the monotony of sports games by letting players proceed at their own pace through a virtual landscape. Activision’s next blockbuster franchise –the World War II game Call of Duty-came in 2003 from a group of developers who had left EA to found a studio called Infinity Ward. In 2006, Kotick paid $100 million for a company called Harmonix , which had developed a game revolving around a guitar-shaped peripheral: the Guitar Hero franchise has relationship between video game and popular music and, as of this writing ,generated more than $2 billion in revenue.