From Kotaku.com:

Robert Bowling, community manager for Modern Warfare developers Infinity Ward, has returned to his Tweeting ways after a week's well-deserved silence.

And it's straight back to Call of Duty PR work, too, with the revelation that since its release late last year over 25 million people have played Modern Warfare 2 across the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Those numbers are of course tracking only those who have played the game in some way online. Which would be the vast majority of gamers, but still, it means the actual number of people who have spent time with Modern Warfare 2 would be a little higher.

Xbox 360 is in first place followed by the PS3 and the PC bringing up the rear. No exact numbers on each platform or by how much percentage wise.

Source

With all the CoD community news being about the goings on at Infinity Ward with Activision, Jockyitch had discussion on Bash: 141:

In this BASH, we are devoting the cast to talk about this week’s decapitation of Infinity Ward’s leadership by their owners, Activision.

Monday evening, we all sat stunned in front of our computer screens as G4TV’s Patrick Klepek broke the story of the firing of IW’s President/Game Director Jason West and the CEO Vince Zampella. Shocking news made even more surreal given that IW’s game sales of MW2 have nearly approached one billion dollars.

What gives? Why were these two men fired? What does it mean for gamers and is this good news or bad news for PC gamers?

My special guest on the program, providing his deep insight into this event, is Game Editor for ArsTechnica.com, Ben Kuchera.

Hajas notified me of some updates they are working on. Check it out:

The new Fronltines is comming! With 40 gametypes, 12 weapons modes, paratroopers support, with the War Server with Random battlefields up to 3999 battles in the SAME war and LOTS more.

You all already know that I'm working on a new version of Frontlines since the Modern WarFAIL 2 was revealed last year. Was many and many many hours of work specially because things that should be easy to do wasn't at all because the limitation of the engine, which forced me to simply rewrite the main spine not only of my mod, but in a way to change the main spine of the game.

First was the gametypes limit which made me rewrite all the map/gametypes behavior of the game, then was created the Frontlines Commands to overrun all this. Then now is the allocated memory of the game, there's no more memory available for my code! The new version is so huge that seams they never expected a mod of this size ever, but I can't be mad with IW for this because this kind of thing was never made before, and probably will be the last time too.

According to The Tech Game, the following video is an apparent leak of the upcoming "Stimulus Package" DLC pack headed to Modern Warfare 2.


Real? Fake? What's your take on the revealed maps, are you happy that there is a possible mix of old and new maps included?

The map pack, be it this one or something else, is slated to arrive at some point this Spring.

For the rights to the Modern Warfare series.

From Kotaku:

Jason West and Vince Zampella, the men at the centre of this week's drama at Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, have filed suit against Activision over claims they are owed "substantial royalty payments".

"Activision has refused to honor the terms of its agreements and is intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy of this State (California) that employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned," said the pair's attorney, Robert Schwartz, of law firm O'Melveny & Myers. "Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st."

West and Zampella are coming out swinging. "We were shocked by Activision's decision to terminate our contract," Jason West says. "We poured our heart and soul into that company, building not only a world class development studio, but assembling a team we've been proud to work with for nearly a decade. We think the work we've done speaks for itself."

"After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn't have to sue to get paid", Zampella adds.

Interestingly, in addition to seeking the unpaid royalties, the pair are also after "the contractual rights Activision granted to West and Zampella to control Modern Warfare-branded games". Whether that means they want to make "Modern Warfare" games without Activision, or would seek to have the brand buried if it's without their input, is unclear. We'll update when we hear more.

http://kotaku.com/5485295/infinity-w...paid-royalties

Just a day after the "un-pleasantries" at the Infinity Ward offices, Activision has officially announced the development of a new Call of Duty title by Sledgehammer Games.

While it has been confirmed that Treyarch is developing the Call of Duty title for release in 2010, Sledgehammer is set to be hard at work on the 2011 title in the Call of Duty series. Sledgehammer is made up of former Visceral Games (Dead Space, Dante's Inferno) executives, Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey.

"2010 will be another important year for the Call of Duty franchise," stated Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing. "In addition to continued catalog sales, new downloadable content from Infinity Ward and a new Call of Duty release, we are excited about the opportunity to bring the franchise to new geographies, genres and players."

Probably the biggest change coming to the series in 2011 is the mention that Sledgehammer's title will "extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre." Make of that what you will.