Yesterday, we brought you the first look at CODXP. Today, we’re bringing you the third look at how CODXP is being created. It shows how big the event is. How much work is going into the event itself.
Call of Duty XP will have a lot of events going on. You can go into life-size Scrapyard, Training Pit, and Zipline. You can also tour the armory, and life-size Burger Town. You’ll be able to meet Robert Bowling, Major Nelson, Dropkick Murphys, and Kanye West! You’ll be able to buy beverages, and food. You have a chance to win some amazing prizes in Black Ops competitions, and there’s also a $1 million Call oF Duty tournament taking place at CODXP. Most of all, you have a chance to receive a free copy of MW3 Hardened Edition, and be the first to play Modern Warfare 3!
Without further ado, the third look at the making of the Call of Duty Experience:
If only I had $150 and airfare costs… I would have gone! I would have gone…
Robert Bowling has been busy at CODXP lately, he gave a tour of Call of Duty Experience and now he is taking interviews with publications as of late. The latest one reveals more info about MW3. We only have a few days before Call of Duty XP starts, so why not divulge information about Modern Warfare 3? Righty so!
Robert let it slip about New Modes, PointStreaks (on top of Killstreaks), tools, weapon upgrades and more. Enjoy!
Call of Duty Experience takes place on September 2nd, and 3rd. Stay tuned for more information about Modern Warfare 3!
Call of Duty XP will have a lot of events going on. You can go into life-size Scrapyard, Training Pit, and Zipline. You can also tour the armory, and life-size Burger Town. You’ll be able to meet Robert Bowling, Major Nelson, Dropkick Murphys, and Kanye West! You’ll be able to buy beverages, and food. You have a chance to win some amazing prizes in Black Ops competitions, and there’s also a $1 million Call oF Duty tournament taking place at CODXP. Most of all, you have a chance to receive a free copy of MW3 Hardened Edition, and be the first to play Modern Warfare 3!
Robert Bowling gave the world the walkthrough of Call of Duty XP, see for yourself:
It’s lookin’ good. And one of the footage shows off MW3′s menus. I knew the leak wasn’t fake.
Yesterday, we brought you the first look at CODXP. Today, we’re bringing you the second look at how CODXP is being created. It shows how big the event is. How much work is going into the event itself.
Call of Duty XP will have a lot of events going on. You can go into life-size Scrapyard, Training Pit, and Zipline. You can also tour the armory, and life-size Burger Town. You’ll be able to meet Robert Bowling, Major Nelson, Dropkick Murphys, and Kanye West! You’ll be able to buy beverages, and food. You have a chance to win some amazing prizes in Black Ops competitions, and there’s also a $1 million Call oF Duty tournament taking place at CODXP. Most of all, you have a chance to receive a free copy of MW3 Hardened Edition, and be the first to play Modern Warfare 3!
Without further ado, the first look at the making of the Call of Duty Experience:
If only I had $150 and airfare costs… I would have gone! I wanna go!
Microsoft posted a behind-the-scenes video of crafting, and getting CODXP ready. If you ever wanted to know what it would take to create a massive event such as Call of Duty Experience, Microsoft has you covered. CODXP is being sponsored by Xbox 360, so naturally, Microsoft is doing all this marketing for Activision.
Call of Duty XP will have a lot of events going on. You can go into life-size Scrapyard, Training Pit, and Zipline. You can also tour the armory, and life-size Burger Town. You’ll be able to meet Robert Bowling, Major Nelson, Dropkick Murphys, and Kanye West! You’ll be able to buy beverages, and food. You have a chance to win some amazing prizes in Black Ops competitions, and there’s also a $1 million Call oF Duty tournament taking place at CODXP. Most of all, you have a chance to receive a free copy of MW3 Hardened Edition, and be the first to play Modern Warfare 3!
Without further ado, the first look at the making of the Call of Duty Experience:
If only I had $150 and airfare costs… I would have gone! I wanna go!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is on the verge of release when it releases this November. We haven’t had a lot of news as of late, that is until now. Robert Bowling have been taking interviews with various gaming websites. A lot of the information released pertains to Spec Ops and Multiplayer. Some of them were about Call of Duty Elite, which is going into beta any day now, and some were about the differences between COD4 and MW3. At one point a discussion took place about the difference between Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of MW3.
In an event that took place in New York City, both GamerRanx and Kotaku has gotten tidbits and information about MW3. Robert Bowling, the creative strategist at infinity ward said to Kotaku that they want to simplify gameplay by giving players less to think about by going back to COD4′s roots with infantry-style gameplay, rather than MW2′s major emphasis in air-support.
“What happens when you have more is that the professional guys are using that spot that is either difficult to get to… There’s fewer places to hide, which discourages the more camper mentality that seemed to emerge in the map design of Modern Warfare 2.”
Robert Bowling seems to love COD4, that he prefers the gameplay of Modern Warfare over Modern Warfare 2′s emphasis on air-support, and vertical combat.
“Modern Warfare style is, for me, all about the high-speed, fast-paced—and I’m talking in terms of smooth controls and 60-frames-per-second framerate—infantry-focused combat.”
Modern Warfare 3′s multiplayer will the most popular mode in the gamne, and Activision hasn’t revealed the multiplayer portion of the game, instead, they’re holding off until Call of Duty XP in September. Robert Bowling was in NYC to show off MW3′s sub-mode, the survival mode – a two player co-op mode. Not to be confused with Spec Ops, which is rumored to allow for more players per match.
“It’s merging all three worlds, really, of a single-player experience, because you can play it all solo, a multiplayer experience and the co-op experience. It’s giving you a completely new experience that blurs the line between all three modes. I think that’s what was missing and I think that’s where, you know, the future lies in blurring those lines instead of them being hard definitions of experiences.”
Rob moved onto the philosophy about map design, about what the devs want players to be doing:
“What that is is really analyzing very aspect of how we want you to play out the map; how a team should play out a map; and how a lone wolf should play out the map. We’re looking at things like: how many hot spots do you have when you’re coming around the corner? How many angles and locations do you have to check that you need to worry about engaging an enemy from? It’s allowing you to easily envision a map in your head as you’re playing through it. So you’re looking at, ‘Ok, this map is going to be played in X amount of ways.’ and so on.”
He went into further detail about how the dev team tries to tackle the multiplayer maps:
“I’m coming around the corner. I don’t want to have to worry about being shot from 50 different angles. I want to be able to know, ‘OK, I cleared the top floor, I cleared the second floor, I cleared the base, I’m good in this area. OK, now I’m coming through this doorway, I have to watch this doorway, this alleyway and this spot.’ And then, when you’re playing objective [matches], you need to be able to know the routes and break them down in your head as you play the areas. Like Search and Destroy… I know I’ve cleared this area. There’s no way this guy can get there. And then going in an adding the fun secret stuff that people find three months into playing, like ‘Did you know if you run up the tail of the plane in Afghan you can leap to the top of the mountain instead of circling around to the route that everyone is covering?’”
Rob made sure that Kotaku understands that the dev team wants to simplify, and Rob really wants to go back to COD4′s fast-paced gameplay.
“Call of Duty 4 was much more simplistic in its map design: You have the sight points, you have the routes players will take. It was very flat in terms of where you could go. Modern Warfare 2 had a major focus on vertical combat, increasing the multi-floor levels, increasing the number of buildings you go into. There were a lot more places you could go than just the main routes and buildings where you were meant to go. That encourages and discourages a lot of types of gameplay. With Modern Warfare 3, it’s much, much more on allowing you to focus on what’s necessary; it’s making vertical combat when it makes sense but it’s not a blanket rule across every map. You will have some maps that focus on verticality and that are focused on multiple things. And then you have other maps that are very limited on the hotspots. The hotspots are a key thing on Modern Warfare 3. We went into each map wanting you to be able to turn a corner and know very easily that these are the three—no more than five—places I need to check.”
Rob then turned to hardcore players who stuck on Call of Duty over the years, he made sure that Kotaku understands that he wants to make sure that hardcore players knows that they’re building the game up for hardcore players:
“But for the hardcore guys who have been with us since the beginning, that speaks volumes: the map design, the return to focus on gun-on-gun, all that stuff.”
According to an interview with MTV MultiPlayer, Robert Bowling let it slip that Party Chat feature has been altered in many ways that allows players the options for Party Chat, and that some modes will allow it, some won’t:
“The only place where Party Chat should be blocked is Search & Destroy.” In that mode, players are given just a single life per round, so those attempting to cheat with Party Chat would definitely give players an advantage. It wouldn’t, however, be blocked “for modes like Dom[ination].”
He went in further detail:
“A major focus of ‘Modern Warfare 3′ multiplayer is allowing you to have a lot more control over [how you play], looking at those restrictions and doing away with stuff like [Party Chat blocking] that’s super hardcore. It’s about giving options. We will have places where competitive guys go where you might have restrictive voice chat. And then you have an option to maybe play that same mode without the same restrictions if that’s the type of player you are.”
DualShockers did an interview with Mr. Bowling about Modern Warfare 3, the differences between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of MW3, and more:
What do you think so far about the simplification of Modern Warfare 3? Do you like that it’s going back to the COD4 roots? I DO!
We’ve got the first look at the Spec Ops mode recently on Jimmy Fallon’s show. [article] Robert Bowling, the creative strategist for Infinity Ward posted a tweet teasing a picture for the upcoming trailer for Modern Warfare 3′s Survival Mode within Spec Ops. Robert Bowling also responded to some questions via his tweeted picture.
The first question was from AL3XJC “What gun is that?” Robert answered that the gun that’s being used is the Remington ACR, not to be confused with the regular ACR from MW2. Another familiar feature from MW2 is the HUD, upon answering a question from Jarsh019 Robert said that the HUD may change up until launch. He added that the HUD may be different across Single Player, Spec Ops, and Multiplayer. See for yourself:
And so, as you can see, there’s some sort of barracks that you go to – Mr. Bowling said in response to Nelson2030 that you can buy upgrades. On top of that, a user named ThemanJordo thought that COD Points was displayed. Robert quelled that notion, saying that the points that he refers to is currency for Spec Ops, where you can buy killstreaks, gear, weapons, and upgrades. This means that Infinity Ward is upping the ante when it comes to survival modes. It may revolutionize the way we look at survival modes. As it stands, survival modes such as World at War’s zombie mode, and Black Ops’ zombie mode – they all only allowed you to advance through doors, and levels. They only allowed you to buy weapons and pick up a special random weapon. It seems like Infinity Ward is trying to do something different from the other survival modes out on the market. In MW2, you could use killstreaks, but only within limitations. This means you can actually buy killstreaks and use it when YOU want to. It’s up in the air whether you can stack the killstreaks or not.
The one thing I noticed though, is the drawing on the wall. It is bomb shaped. Are we going to be able to pick up bombs, buy them, and whatnot? Robert said that we can buy gear, but nobody knows what kinds of gear he would be referring to. The other thing I noticed is the Juggernaut design. The design may hint at stronger, and more stronger armor for the juggernauts that wade through MW3′s new survival mode.
Stay tuned for the official trailer, there is no ETA according to Robert, but he’ll flash a tweet. My guess is soon, otherwise he wouldn’t be posting the teaser photo of the trailer at this point. Usually its the very next week that we get the trailer, it happened with MW2′s multiplayer reveal. ‘Till then, waiting commences.
This article is a continuation of my previous article about the ongoing court battle over Activision’s various activities regarding ex-Infinity Ward executives. May 23rd was the start of that lawsuit. There was not a lot of information available until someone discovered a wiki entry for the Call of Duty lore.
Let’s start with the stipulations of the lawsuit. Because it’s quite interesting. According to the entry:
If West and Zampella win, the two will be compensated for the royalty payments, and also retain their creative rights to the Modern Warfare series. What that could mean for Modern Warfare 3 is unclear.
Actually, it IS clear. There’s a reason why Activision decided to use the “MW3″ sub-title; its not just a marketing stunt, they have no choice but to go to a plan B. Robert Bowling said in an interview that the Box Art is not final. So if for whatever reason Activision and the duo decides to come to an agreement, they can probably use “Modern Warfare 3.” That might come with a price, though. However if the duo and EA loses:
If Activision wins, then West, Zampella, and EA would have to provide Activision with a hefty sum of money – over $400 million.
This means that whatever Respawn has cookin’ under wraps is going to have to take a backburner and the duo would have to essentially work for EA. This actually coincides with the recent notion that Respawn is not going to appear at E3 to show off the game they’re developing. They, as individuals will wander the showfloor, however.
Now that we’ve got the stipulations out of the way, we’re going to start talking about the case itself. In the case of West, Zampella, Electronic Arts, Inc. v. Activision Publishing, Inc. everything looks messy because things get really complicated by the time this whole thing gets underway. Just looking at the list makes a lot of people confused as to what is the intention of everyone involved. Yes, you can argue that Activision wants money, Vince and Jason wants the money, too, and they all also want to take over the Modern Warfare brand. But EA got into this mess late last year because Jason and Vince were accused of conspiring against Activision.
As I have reported before, there’s was supposed to be a huge reveal, but April came and went. There was a lot of speculation as to why, and “what’s next?” Battlefield 3 is taking over the video game industry by storm via gameplay reveals through online videos. Then out of nowhere, EA advertises the game on a basketball game – that’s supposed to be Activision’s tactic.
Activision has been mum about any new Call of Duty games at all this year, aside from two map packs that came out for Black Ops. The first map pack is called First Strike, and the second one is called Escalation. Some people were understanding of the delay, because Activision wants to give both map packs all the marketing resources, and focus on Black Ops’ two map packs. Others are waiting, and growing more and more impatient.
Now, we’re getting conflicting reports of either “Call of Duty Online,” or Modern Warfare 3. We have known that a Call of Duty MMO was in the works for quite some time; one source dates back to 2008. [Here's a 2009 source] A website seems to have confirmation that COD Online exists and is slated for an announcement. [source] Mutiple sources are saying that the game will ship in 2012. As for Modern Warfare 3, several sources are saying MW3 is about to be revealed soon, as in today or tomorrow. [source] Earlier this week though, a very well-known voice actor in COD4 and MW2 (voice for Gaz and Ghost respectively) said an announcement for Modern Warfare 3 is coming this month. [source, here's a better translation on a forum post at MW3Forum]
Here’s a new update: It has been confirmed that we’re going to be seeing a reveal of Modern Warfare 3 very soon. Official PlayStation Magazine hinted at a huge MW3 reveal, which you can see to the right. If you want to inspect the image in better resolution, head over to the source. Just remember, by the time you read next month’s issue of OPM, E32011 will already have been on-going, and we’ll know more information about MW3 there.
There’s a lot of speculation on whether Call of Duty is dying, or will just die off. [Here is one source] There has been some articles saying that Activision wrote in their memos that Call of duty may be dying, and some differences were pointed out. [source] Call of Duty is going to continue and will continue to exist, and will continue to sell.
Lets get to the facts first, though. I mean, we’re talking about a franchise that makes 1 billion dollars a year, give or take. That’s just revenues. COD4 has sold over 17 million units since it released in 2007. World of War sold less than COD4, however. Modern Warfare 2 sold more, by selling over 20 million units. Just to give you an idea, World of War sold 1.14 million units the first week of sales, while Modern Warfare 2 not only sold more in a week, and took in more money in the process by grossing 550 million dollars in the first week of sales. That’s close to a billion dollars. Now, earlier I said COD4 sold 17 million units, World at War fell short of expectations by selling only 11 million units worldwide. Black Ops grossed 650 million on the first week of sales, and 18 million units. Sit back and look at the difference in the numbers.
COD4: Modern Warfare – 17 million units.
COD: World at War – 11 million units.
COD: Modern Warfare 2 – 20 million units.
COD: Black Ops – 18 million units.
For the record: COD4, and Modern Warfare 2 were developed by Infinity Ward. World at War and Black Ops were developed by Treyarch. Notice that each company has more or less. Treyarch seems to lag behind Infinity Ward each time. Treyarch has consistently shown that the company is incapable of pushing the envelope. While Infinity Ward pushed hard. I also noticed that there’s a market cap in there. Black Ops only sold more because it seems to inherit the COD4/MW2 market. Activision needs to push harder in order to break a new record.
Let’s look at the history of the FPS niche for a bit, and then the music games niche. First Person Shooters were invented in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D. Some argue that it dates back to 1973 with far, far less advanced games, and an NES game almost invented it with a power glove game called “Super Glove Ball.” But due to the difference in gameplay aesthetics, the games before Wolfenstein 3D did not fill the bill, but Doom did, and became one of the most influential video game of all time. That’s what…. 18 years that FPS has existed? That’s quite a long time. Now, music games for the most part have not sold all that well until games like Dance Dance Revolution, and Guitar Hero came onto the scene. The trend of music games started as late as 1997 if memory serves me right. That’s a 5 year difference you see there. In 1998 Dance Dance Revolution definitely revolutionized how you played music games – apart from physical media games like Simon Says. Guitar Hero was a franchise that was born in the year 2005, that’s a huge gap you see there, between DDR and GH is 7 years without a real killer app.
My point here is that FPS has been a constant, constant, and I mean the one constant genre that kept in the top 10 video games. There are hundreds and hundreds of FPS titles out in the market, against a niche that only survives on innovation alone. Not because of the genre. Not because it’s something that gamers want to play on a year by year basis. Not because it’s something new. Because the gamers are used to the genre. While music games are very broad, it fails to be the one constant thing that developers try to capitalize on, and miserably fails to keep gamers hooked. There’ll always be a new franchise that becomes the #1 best selling video game for that year. Doom was a franchise that has been the king for 5 years straight, Quake came in second for the same consecutive number of years, and lets not forget Epic’s best offering: The entire Unreal universe. Hell, there’s an engine named after it.
Lets talk about Electronic Arts; a company that is well intent on taking down Call of Duty from being the #1 video game in the world today. Electronic Arts is no stranger to the FPS genre; it has developed some First Person Shooters. Medal of Honor is their personal project, they have developed James Bond games, Battlefield, and Crysis.
In 2002, the Medal of Honor series was on a decline thanks to the intense competition of FPS titles released at the time, one game that emerged victorious was Call of Duty the year afterwards. Last year, Medal of Honor was revived by Electronic Arts with the intention to compete directly against Call of Duty. That plan fell flat on their faces because of many reasons.
That’s the next subject. One of the reasons why Medal of Honor failed to sell well, or nearly as well as Black Ops that released the month after MoH. Electronic Arts, if you’re reading this, take notes:
Modern Warfare 2 had a controversial component in a mission called “No Russian.” The segment was one of the most iconic, the most controversial mission of any video game thus far, it makes games like Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto pale in comparison at all. Rockstar might have been jealous of Activision. It’s so legendary, that pretty much every single television media conglomerates spoken ill towards Modern Warfare 2. But that’s actually a good thing, EA. It sold more copies worldwide. If you want, here’s one of the videos that bashes Modern Warfare 2:
Shortly before Medal of Honor’s release, there was a lot of information surfacing onto the internet, in the wake of it all though there was a lot of controversy surrounding one particular thing (actually two things): One, one of the factions that are in Medal of Honor was the Taliban. The other was the fact that the game focuses on the military team that fought in afghanistan; that’s also the where of MoH revival. A lot of people were asking if Osama Bin Laden is actually part of the plot.
The company retracted it’s idea to include Taliban; they removed the group entirely and altered pieces of the story. [source] So, MoH is basically a dumbed down first person shooter that was also plagued by various gameplay problems.
The difference between Electronic Arts and Activision shines through based on what you see so far; Activision had the balls to keep a controversial mission as part of the entire game, as much as it is a calculated risk, it paid off for them: 550 million dollars in the first week of sales. Basically kicked Grand Theft Auto 4 from the top of the list. Electronic Arts was shy of controversy so much that it had to remove the position that literally every gamer would want: Kill the Talibans, kill Osama Bin Laden.
Electronic Arts was very close to winning that top place. If only had Electronic Arts left it alone, it would have made them more money than they ever imagined. And I don’t think better graphics or engine like what Battlefield 3 is being; is going to help matters.
To that end: We do not know the story of Modern Warfare 3 right now, but a lot of people on forums, such as MW3Forum; are saying that Modern Warfare 3 should be “Operation Osama Bin Laden.” Following the news that Bin Laden has been killed.
‘Till then, Call of Duty is king. Deal with it, Electronic Arts!
Here’s a new update: It has been confirmed that we’re going to be seeing a reveal of Modern Warfare 3 very soon. Official PlayStation Magazine hinted at a huge MW3 reveal, which you can see to the right. If you want to inspect the image in better resolution, head over to the 
