Blowing away terrorists, apparently, never gets old.

The new videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, set to hit stores Tuesday, is a sequel spawned by sequels. But rather than following the frequent pattern of franchises fading as they age, Modern Warfare 2 is the most highly anticipated game of the season.

“It’s the biggest launch in our history, bigger than Halo 3,” said Tony Bartel, merchandising and marketing chief for videogame retailer GameStop, which has been taking pre-orders since April.

The manufacturer, Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI), has been advertising the first-person shooter game since March.

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Activision Blizzard’s (ATVI) “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” a first-person-shooter videogame, is coming out Nov. 10, and anticipation is mounting.

Specialty retailer GameStop has been taking pre-orders since last April, much earlier than most games. “It’s the biggest launch in our history, bigger than ‘Halo 3,’” said the company’s head of merchandising and marketing, Tony Bartel, comparing the game to the blockbuster shooter that Microsoft (MSFT) released in 2007.

GameStop stores usually call customers who have pre-ordered games the night before launch. Bartel said, this time, it will be “talking to more people on Monday night than the total amount of ‘Call of Duty: World at War’ that sold in the first month.”

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GameStop (GME) shares are showing impressive resiliency in the face of the fifth straight month of declining sales of video game hardware and software.

As I noted yesterday, July data from research firm NPD Group showed a 37 percent drop in video game hardware sales, and a 26 percent drop in console and handheld hardware sales. The report comes just days ahead of GameStop’s earnings report for its fiscal second quarter ended July, which is due before the open on Thursday, August 20.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia this morning responded to the NPD data by trimming his EPS estimates for GME; he now sees profits for the quarter of 23 cents a share, down from 28 cents.

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The threat from Best Buy (BBY) and other retailers to GameStop’s (GME) video game sales is no joke, writes Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter in a note this morning in which he lowered estimates for GameStop. As Pachter notes, June video game sales were a big disappointment, falling 31 percent, year over year, according to an NPD report last Thursday.

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GameStop (GME) is lending new copies of videogames to their retail store employees and later selling them as new, unused copies, the gamer blog Kotaku asserts. The post contends the practice may be a violation of federal trade laws. Kotaku said the company declined to comment on the practice.

The blog post notes that the videogame retailer’s policy, verified by a number of employees, is that sales associates can check out one item of store merchandise for personal use for up to four days.

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GameStop (GME) shares are getting clobbered today on news that Amazon.com (AMZN) is getting into the business of buying and selling used video games–and so is Toys ’R Us.

Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter explained in a research note today that one reason he has maintained an Outperform rating on GME shares is that the company has dominated the used videogame business; he notes that used games generate 44 percent of the retailer’s gross profits, nearly twice the segment’s sales contribution to the company. Over the last several days, he reports, there have been two attacks on the company’s near monopoly in used games.

On Tuesday, Forbes reported that Toys ’R Us has a pilot program to test the sale of used games in some of its U.S. stores; Forbes noted that the program was first reported in the user forums of a Web site called cheapassgamer.com. Other retailers, including Best Buy (BBY) and Blockbuster (BBI), have previously experimented in the segment, but haven’t made much of a dent.

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It has become popular to say that the gaming industry has become recession-proof, simply because the overall sales for 2008 are up year over year…but those numbers only tell part of the story. Other sources are starting to report some troubling trends in gaming sales, not the least of which is the plummeting price of used games. These trends could lead to some troubling times for gaming in 2009.

Video Game Price Charts tracks the value of used games over a variety of sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY), the so-called “gray market” for games. These are people selling games directly to other people, which means no one is setting an artificial price such as used-game stores like GameStop. The data isn’t pretty: Prices of used games took a beating in the end of the year, as the chart below illustrates.

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Shares of video game retailer GameStop (GME) are coming under pressure after the company reported sales and profit this morning for the fiscal second quarter ending in July that were well clear of estimates and at the high end of its forecast; it raised its forecast, but nevertheless, may not be seeing the profit upside some expected. Same-store sales are also lackluster this quarter.

Sales rose 34 percent, year over year, to $1.8 billion, beating the average estimate of $1.7 billion, while profit of 34 cents was ahead of the average 28 cent estimate, and ahead of management’s forecast by six cents.

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