Activision Blizzard is reporting $981 million in revenue for the last quarter of their fiscal year ending on March 31st, with $189 million in profits, which they say is all thanks to the continued impressive performance of games in their Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises.

Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, the company claims, remain two of the top five best selling franchises in the US and Europe, as Guitar Hero: World Tour became the best selling third-party title in the US across all platforms (in dollars), and is the best selling third-party title on the Wii – the only third-party title to crack the top five best selling games on the platform.

Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, said that the company is raising its financial outlook for the calendar year of 2009, as they plan to release their “strongest video game slate, based on some of the industry’s most profitable franchises.”

Included in their upcoming release slate are titles such as Prototype, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, and Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits for the Nintendo DS, while movie-based franchise games on the horizon (and already released) include X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

A forthcoming Tony Hawk game, which has been in relative dormancy for the last two years, will be released this holiday season, while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (now sporting the ‘Call of Duty’ moniker again) will also release at the end of the year. Additionally, Bizarre Creations’ upcoming racing title, now known to be called Blur, will be releasing alongside Tony Hawk and Modern Warfare 2 to bolster Activision Blizzard’s holiday release lineup.

Kotick also mentioned that the Guitar Hero franchise has now reached $2 billion in sales, claiming that it is the third franchise to achieve the milestone, after Mario and Madden before it.