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Consumer Confidential: Games, games and games

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Here’s your tasty-Tuesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

--Activision’s new video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, went on sale shortly after midnight today. Industry analysts expect the shoot-’em-up to be one of the fastest-selling titles ever, with as many as 13 million copies estimated to be sold by the end of the year. I stopped by a Best Buy outlet in West L.A. where Activision was planning a big launch party. Javier Rivera, 25, was first in line for the new Call of Duty. He said he’d gotten there at 5 a.m., meaning that he planned to stand around for 19 hours to get his hands on the game. ‘I’m not working today,’ he explained. ‘I am working tomorrow.’ But not very alertly, it’s safe to assume.

--Maybe guys like Rivera are one reason that game retailer GameStop says it expects sales to remain brisk this holiday season, even though analysts say consumers aren’t buying as many titles as they used to.

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--Speaking of high-stakes games, the head of Bank of America, Ken Lewis, says history will vindicate his company’s big-bucks purchase of brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. Right after it vindicates the invasion of Iraq, that is.

— David Lazarus

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