Now that the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack is available for download through PSN, to celebrate the launch, PSN is hosting a Double XP Weekend.
Players can earn twice as many experience points as they battle gamers from specific playlists on the new maps starting at 12:01 GMT, Friday, April 25 through 11:59 PDT, Sunday, April 27.
Gamers will also have the opportunity to play with developers from Infinity Ward on Friday, April 25, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST and 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST. Make sure to add the following PSN IDs to your friend’s list:
fourzerotwoiw
COD4Drew
COD4Bryan COD4Justin
COD4Neel
COD4Brian COD4David
COD4Ed
Additionally, the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Game of the Year Edition for the PS3 system will ship to North American retailers on May 6. The new title includes a token to access the explosive new multiplayer maps featured in the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack.
For information and updates on CoD4, players can check out our previous posts or visit the official site.
Via: Press Release
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Def Leppard’s Guitar Hero IIIouting and the obligatory weekly dose of Rock Band tracks (now finally with a full album!), there’s a ton of great new content now available on the PlayStation Store. The biggest release is certainly the Variety Map Pack ($10) for Call of Duty 4 which naturally includes four new multiplayer maps.
A new PS one Classic was also released today with R-Types ($6), ending that particular drought. (Even though you and I both know we probably won’t see another Classic for weeks.) There’s also the Biolith Rebellion 2 expansion set for The Eye of Judgment, whichs adds more than 100 new creatures, spells and abilities, so that sounds like a must-buy for fans of The Eye.
There’s also plenty of videos, demos of both echochromeand Iron Man, a map pack for Army of Two, downloadable songs for Karaoke Revolution, and more. So hit the break and check out everything now available for download.
It was re-confirmed earlier today that, yes, Treyarch and Infinity Ward would continue to trade off on developing games for the Call of Duty franchise. And unfortunately, yes, that does mean the next Call of Duty game will be taking us back to *groan* World War II. On the plus side though, at least Treyarch is looking to shake up the game a little bit with its setting. Rumor is now suggesting that Call of Duty 5 will actually take place in Japan. It is also suspected that the game will put players in the shoes of Japanese soldiers, rather than their Western counterparts. Details are of course sketchy about what sort of battles will be recreated, but I’d bet you’ll be taking a trip to Iwo Jima at some point. And I’d bet the game will somehow still be a lesser version of Call of Duty 2.
COD4 fans that have been waiting download the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Map pack for the PS3 don’t have much longer to go. The map pack finally hits PlayStation Network Thursday, April 24 for both North America and Europe.
You’ll want to download those map and get familiarized with them fast. To celebrate, Sony is sponsoring a PS3 Variety Map Pack Double XP Weekend Extravaganza. Players in NA and EU will earn Double XP all weekend starting 12:01 AM GMT on Friday, April 25 to 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday, April 27. They’ll also have the opportunity to “Play with the Devs” Friday, April 25th. The Infinity Ward team are up for the challenge and will be playing online on Friday, April 25 from 11AM to 2PM PDT and from 5 PM to 8 PM PDT.
Infinity Ward has supposedly announced that they will be the exclusive developer of the CoD franchise after Treyarch releasesCall of Duty 5. Next-Gen spoke with a former Activision Underground employee Monday who stated that Infinity Ward renegotiated its contract with Activision, thus giving it complete developmental control over the CoD franchise.
Treyarch will still be the developer behind the upcoming CoD5, but this renegotiation of the contract is linked to the closing of Activision’s Underground, according to the source who wished to remain anonymous.
Supposedly, CoD5 isn’t going to be an FPS but a third-person action adventure game that would have become a yearly franchise like the original FPS. If that were the case, Activision would be able to release two CoD titles a year - but contract renegotiations mean that no other Activision studio will be able to develop any CoD game except for Infinity Ward.
You can get more details on this by clicking through the link below.
Apparently this was just a rumor coming from a bitter ex-employee. According to Activision in a statement sent to Eurogamer, they have claimed that these allegations are false:
A spokesperson for the publisher told Eurogamer it was a total fabrication, and that Treyarch and Infinity Ward would still alternately create installments in the shooter series.
Upper Deck has announced the Call of Duty Real-Time Card Game based on the WWII Activision video game of the same name. The card game is designed for two players for quick strategic play. Players will lay down cards simultaneously until a pause card is played making for a more fast paced, frenetic game.
Cards will be packaged in Squad Decks, one for each army: American, British, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Polish and Russian. each of these decks will contain three unique types of soldiers, supporting “class” cards for each solider and three country cards.
For more information on the game visit the Call of Duty Real-Time Card Game official website. The Call of Duty Card Game is projected for release in Fall 2008.
According to NPD figures which were released today, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has officially sold over 9 Million copies worldwide since it’s release. Combines those figures with the ones posted earlier regarding 1 million map packs downloaded, and you have yourself a winner.
Want to hear people gushing about the game in the press release? Then read on!
“Infinity Ward is extremely grateful for support from our loyal Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare community around the world,” said Robert Bowling, community relations manager, Infinity Ward.“From the beginning, we were committed to do our best and that continues now with the Variety Map Pack. We can’t wait to get back online with everyone.”
“Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare delivers one of the best online multiplayer experiences ever,” said Will Kassoy, senior vice president, global brand management, Activision Publishing, Inc.“We are excited to be able to expand that experience and deliver to fans a new variety of locations and environments which have all of the intensity they have come to expect with Call of Duty.”
Ya just gotta love press releases. It could be the suckiest game that ever graced a console, and higher ups would still praise it to high heaven. Thankfully CoD4 is not one of those.
Anyway, congrats to Infinity Ward and Activision for giving gamers something to enjoy, and we continue to wish them bountiful success.
After a truly impressive run atop the charts, Call of Duty 4 has finally been dethroned from the #1 software spot in the latest NPDs. While that was to be expected with the launch of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it wasn’t expected that the game would drop all the way to #9. That’s indicative of the surplus of games released in March; CoD4 only saw a drop of just under 60,000 units. Last month its 237,000 units would have been good enough for #4 on the charts.
Smash Bros. was of course the big name in March. 2.7 million copies were sold, which blows away the #2 game, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which had a solid month with 752,300 units sold. That’s followed by Army of Two at 606,100, and then of course Wii Play, which was bound to sell quite a few copies after the Wii had such a monster month. It sold 409,800 copies.
One impressive figure is that the PSP – normally absent from this list each and every month – had two games on the list, at numbers five and six, no less. God of War: Chains of Olympus edged out Crisis Core for the top PSP spot, but it’s encouraging to see that good PSP games can sell.
Activision announced today that the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack, has set a new record for the number of paid downloads on XBL Marketplace by surpassing one million downloads in the first nine days since its release. Additionally, XBL members played more than 30 million sessions and logged more than 30 million hours of gameplay.
Available exclusively for download via XBL now through April 24, the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack expands the experience of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and includes four new multiplayer maps featuring a variety of locations, while supporting split-screen and system link play for 800 Microsoft Points.
The Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack will be available for download via the PSN beginning April 24 for $9.99.
Also, Microsoft has teamed-up with Activision and Infinity Ward to launch its newest online offensive: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare LIVE Fire Weekend 2008, a 72-hour play and win sweepstakes full of games and prizes beginning on Friday, April 18 at 12:01 a.m. EDT through Sunday, April 20 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Hourly prizes will be awarded throughout the weekend, including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare shirts, Infinity Ward autographed posters and XBL point cards. One Grand Prize winner also will receive an Infinity Ward autographed Xbox 360 Elite console and a Limited Edition Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare faceplate, among other items. Players can register now through April 17, 2008 at 11:59 pm here.
Over on Robert Bowling’s blog IAMfourzerotwo, the Director of Communications for Infinity Ward has posted some great news for PS3 owners. The CoD4 Variety Map Pack will be hitting North America on April 24 for the PS3 and Europe will get theirs on May 1st. I will let the man tell you himself:
I have some great PS3 news for everyone! We have hammered out the details for the upcoming DLC and will be releasing the new Variety Map Pack on PS3 in North America on Thursday, April 24. In addition, We’re also really excited that the Map Pack passed Sony Europe certification and will be propped on the PlayStation Network on May 1.
To celebrate the release of both map packs we will be hosting a Double XP weekend for North America from 12:01 AM PDT on Friday, April 25 to 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday, April 27. North American players will be able to play the new maps against members of the Infinity Ward team on Friday, April 25 from 5 PM to 8 PM PDT.
We’ll also be hosting another special Double XP and Play With Devs event for our worldwide / European users specifically. For our European fans, we will have a Double XP weekend beginning at 12:01 AM GMT on Friday, May 2 and concluding at 11:59 PM GMT on Sunday, May 4. You will also get a chance to play the new maps against the IW team on Friday, May 2 from 7 PM GMT to 10 PM GMT. That way you guys aren’t left out due to conflicting time zones!
Thanks for all your support everyone and I look forward to playing with you guys online. If you have any questions, let me know!
(PC Guys: I hope to have PC contest details for you and submission process to be started by the end of the week. Stay tuned.)
Thanks Robert, you just made some PS3 users extremely happy today.
Call of Duty fans should set aside their next weekend in advance, as Microsoft and Activision are doing everything they can to get you online and playing Call of Duty 4. Live Fire Weekend, as they’re calling it (which is a pretty good pun), will give you the opportunity to win tons of prizes, including CoD4 shirts, autographed posters, and Microsoft Point cards, in addition to the grand prize of an autographed Xbox 360 Elite and other goodies.
You’ll also have the opportunity to play with a bunch of the developers from Infinity Ward and the could-not-be-less-arbitrary UFC fighter Jens Pulver. A list of the gamertags to keep an eye out for can be found on the event page at Xbox.com.
Sounds like it’ll be a fun weekend that hopefully won’t bring Xbox Live down to its knees. And who knows, maybe you’ll get to play Call of Duty 4 with Jens Pulver!
Despite the wait and sketchy internet rumors, the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare map pack for the Xbox 360 is finally live. Released at 9:30 EST this morning, gamers are now privy to Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek, and Killhouse provided that they have 800 MS points ($10). The folks that purchased the Game of the Year edition are the lucky ones today, for they have a token for the maps and do not have to pay one red cent.
So stop reading this and go download your CoD4 map pack now, and after you have played around with each map for a while, be sure to come back tell us what you thought of them.
Recently, a bit of a spark was lit under the debate over the place of writers in the games industry. Adam Maxwell, a game designer, wrote a piece that was run on Gamasutra which proclaimed that writers don’t have a place in this business, and that they’re essentially an obstacle in the path to creating a good game. I vehemently defended writers, pointing to examples of cases where writers had a dramatically positive impact on a game – Portal, BioShock, and so on.
A new analysis of the value of a good writer by developer James Portnow dives into the subject of how he believes videogame writing should be done. He starts off bluntly enough, as he asserts: “I’ll be blunt. Videogames are terrible at making statements. You want to tell a person what they should think? Go write a book or appear on daytime TV or compose an epic poem…don’t make a videogame.”
One of the subjects he discusses is the problem of binary choices in games. I’ve written before about how it’s this sort of thing that really detracts from the overall experience of a game like BioShock or Mass Effect, and there’s no doubt that Portnow agrees that binary choices need to go.
EPIC FAIL! Binary choice is one of the worst things in gaming. It keeps us from being an art and, more importantly, it takes away “fun” from any game it is in. This one ridiculous cop-out has sabotaged more masterpieces than I can name. What is it? Glad you asked…
A binary choice is a choice between two extremes. Do you want to be Mahatma Gandhi or the lovechild of Satan and Hitler? Do you want to save the world or blow it up for all eternity? Do you want to get laid or not (always a stupid question)?
HUMANS SIMPLY DON’T INTERACT THIS WAY! In case you didn’t get the emphasis on that previous sentence, please take a moment to go into a quiet room and shout it as loud as you can. Done? Good, now maybe you’ve got it.
Despite reports to the contrary, the new Call of Duty 4 map pack is still on track to be released soon and has not been delayed until April 10. In fact, if things go as planned, it could be released as early as tomorrow, but the likely target is tomorrow night or early Friday morning.
Also, Infinity Ward’s fourzerotwo reports that if you own the Game of the Year edition and have a token for the maps, you’ll be able to use it as soon as the DLC goes live on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The rest of us will have to pay 800 Microsoft Points ($10).
Supposedly Activision has issued a new release date for the CoD4 multiplayer map pack for the Xbox 360. Originally scheduled for April 3 the date has been changed to April 10 and PS3 owners can download the map pack 21 days later while the PC version has yet to have a release date announced.
While we here at Gaming Today have not received a press release on this, take this as truth until it can be proved or disproved. We will let you know either way.
Mark Rubin, producer at Infinity Ward, recently revealed that Call of Duty 4 gets ”between 1.2 and 1.3 million users every day” online. So why do I say it’s more than that in the title of this post? Because that number is only for the Xbox 360 version:
“There’s even more on the other platforms [PS3 and PC], but we just don’t have the same numbering system. Overall, even without the other consoles, we are beating the competition. PS3 numbers are monstrously huge. No other game has come close, either online current, or total unique users in a day.”
Rubin went on to comment on the ongoing back-and-forth rivalry with Halo 3 on which game would get the top spot for Xbox Live users:
“We’ve created a lot of heartache for a lot of companies who go up against it. I think Halo’s website says they get something around 845,000 to a million [per day].”
In a word: ouch. And these numbers are without any extra maps being released. I can only guess at what will happen when people get some more goodies to mess around with. Now, let the inevitable ”Halo 3/Call of Duty 4 comment pissing match” commence…
You’ve probably heard in the news how Hillary Clinton “misspoke” when she said she once landed in Bosnia under heavy sniper fire — a statement that was quickly disproved by almost every other news outlet. Naturally, this allowed for a week’s worth of jokes for many light night talk shows, including Real Time With Bill Maher. In this clip, Maher reveals the next installment in the popular Call of Duty franchise with “Hillary Clinton’s 3 AM Call of Duty: Mission Bosnia.” Yes, it’s actually gameplay footage from Frontlines: Fuel of War, but let’s just go along with it. “I’m going in! Cover me, Chelsea!”
Infinity Ward has unveiled a batch of screenshots for the upcoming Call of Duty 4 map pack that should be hitting Xbox Live on April 3rd. The images give a much clearer idea of what to expect from the four maps, Creek, Broadcast, Chinatown and Killhouse. “Broadcast,” for example seems to be pretty much a multiplayer version of the TV station level in the campaign mode. PS3 users should be getting the pack about three weeks later, and unfortunately we still have no idea when the PC version will be made available. The way they explained it though makes me worried they may charge us for it as well.
It’s an age old question: are the guns in games really all that accurate? Oftentimes in the process of reviewing a game, reviewers will praise a game for its realistic weapons – but realistically, the average game reviewer doesn’t know the difference between a Walther PPK and 5″/38 caliber guns. (The former is the gun James Bond has made famous, while the latter is something you’d find on a battleship.)
Popular Mechanics takes a look at this subject by diving in and taking a look at the way various games handle weapons, including Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Call of Duty 4, and even America’s Army.
[A]ccording to Philippe Theiren, an RSV2 designer at Ubisoft Montreal and the team’s self-described “gun guy,” bullet penetration now takes into account incredibly fine details, like whether the target is wearing leather or cloth. “It’s actually an excessively complex formula,” Theiren says. “If someone shoots through a plant, then a car door, then it hits Level 3 body armor, all of that effects the force of the round.” Actual ballistic data associated with the guns in RSV2, then, determine whether you can fire a burst through a wooden table and take someone out.
Except, of course, when the developers feel the need to cheat. All of the guns in RSV2 start out extremely accurate, based on factory stats and more, before game balance and player expectations come into play. A shotgun firing buckshot, for example, has significantly more penetration in RSV2 than it should. Why? “People associate shotguns with powerful, close-range weapons,” Theiren says. So a shotgun blast will punch through walls and armor just fine, even though buckshot is known for its lack of penetration in the real world.
“I take these weapons, and look at what defines them, or what people think defines them,” Theiren explains. “For an Uzi, people think it fires lots of bullets, and it’s really inaccurate.” That, he knows, has nothing to do with reality—if anything, Uzis are considered some of the most reliable and accurate submachine guns around. But the 80s (and Miami Vice in particular) offered us the Uzi as a low-life villain’s weapon, spit-fire and out-of-control. “So I make it fire faster than it should. It’s about taking the personality of a weapon, and making it shine in the game,” Theiren says.
It’s a pretty interesting feature and might go a long way in explaining why the same weapon is so dramatically different from one game to the next, even when they’re all giving off the vibe of a realistic shooter.
Now, I need to go back out to my yard so I can keep practicing with my Phalanx CIWS.
I posted recently about a so called “Co-Op Bill of Rights,” which was a concept inspired by Penny-Arcade and then run with by Microsoft employee Ozymandias on his blog. He threw together a list of features that co-op games must have, and then ones that would be ideal but aren’t necessary due to the time/effort/technical requirements they require. It’s nothing official of course, and it’s likely never going to be something that impacts how developers spend their time. More recently, he posted up a more finalized version with the help of various comments from around the ‘net that his initial article called for.
This got me thinking about features that all games simply must have. It irritates me to no end to go pick up a new game, assume something about the game and then come to find out that a blatantly obvious feature or option is nowhere to be seen. I asked for feedback from readers and friends, and I’ve come up with my own Bill of Rights. It’s not necessarily focused on features that have to be included, but more often functionality and design choices in games. Some of it will overlap with Ozymandias’ list, but that’s only because these are things games absolutely must do.
I’m looking for feedback, so if you think I omitted something or something made the list that shouldn’t have, share in the comments. This is by no means intended to be a finished piece, but more of a building block. And, as long as I’m admitting my faults, this doesn’t apply only to games, but game-related things, as well.
And just to make sure things are clear, I’ll give out examples of games that did it either well – guised as a Dick Vitale “That’s awesome, baby!” – or poorly – a Charles Barley “That’s turrible.”
It was 
Infinity Ward has supposedly announced that they will be the exclusive developer of the CoD franchise after Treyarch releases 
According to NPD figures which were released today, 
Activision announced today that the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack, has set a new record for the number of paid downloads on XBL Marketplace by surpassing one million downloads in the first nine days since its release. Additionally, XBL members played more than 30 million sessions and logged more than 30 million hours of gameplay.
Over on Robert Bowling’s blog IAMfourzerotwo, the Director of Communications for Infinity Ward has posted some great news for PS3 owners. The 
It’s an age old question: are the guns in games really all that accurate? Oftentimes in the process of reviewing a game, reviewers will praise a game for its realistic weapons – but realistically, the average game reviewer doesn’t know the difference between a Walther PPK and 5″/38 caliber guns. (The former is the gun James Bond has made famous, while the latter is something you’d find on a 
