Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection DLC dropping August 23

Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops is still going strong, but that's not stopping the publisher from trying to breathe new life into the Cold War-era shooter. In announcing its financial results today, Activision said it expects that the next Call of Duty: Black Ops content pack will go live for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions of the game sometime before September 30.

While Activision referred to the DLC as "Resurrection" in its financial report, the publisher's social media manager, Dan Amrich, is calling it the "Rezurrection" pack. As for the content, the $15 add-on drops on August 23 on Xbox Live and includes five levels for the game's Zombie mode as well as a 20-song Zombies soundtrack and a Moon Xbox 360 theme.

The first four maps (Nacht der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa, and Der Riese) are remakes of the environments from Call of Duty: World at War, the game that first introduced zombies. The fifth map--Moon--is entirely new and takes place in outer space, on the moon.

The four upgraded World at War maps won't be new to all gamers. These maps were included with the Hardened and Prestige iterations of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Owners of these top-tier editions can download the Rezurrection pack for free on August 23 to get the Moon map, soundtrack, and theme.

The publisher also elaborated further on the series. According to the publisher, Black Ops was the best-selling title in the US and Europe for the first six months of 2011, with players logging a cumulative 2.2 billion hours of online action in the game.

In a postearnings conference call, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said the company had already sold more than 14 million add-on packs for Black Ops. He also compared the game to microtransaction-driven titles on Facebook, saying Call of Duty sees more daily unique players and has higher average revenues per player than any title on the social network.

Hirshberg also updated the lifetime-to-date sales for Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2. Black Ops has now sold 25 million copies since its November debut last year, surpassing its predecessor's lifetime total of 22 million units sold.

The series is also trending upward, as Activision said the total number of unique online gamers in Black Ops' first eight months has surpassed that of its predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, by 30 percent. The next installment in the series could be even more successful, as Activision said that preorders for this November's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are significantly higher now than they were for Black Ops at the comparable point in that game's development. Finally, the publisher confirmed that it is still working on bringing a microtransaction-driven installment in the Call of Duty franchise to gamers in China.

For more on Call of Duty: Black Ops, check out GameSpot's review.