A few days ago a rumor was swirling about a claim an ex-Activison employee made to Next Gen about developer Infinity Ward. According to the insider, Infinity Ward had renegotiated their contract with Activision to be the sole developer of all things Call of Duty.
For a moment the world was at peace. Birds were chirping, sun was shining and food tasted better; then Activision shot it down. Describing the rumor as "erroneous information regarding the CoD franchise," Activision has essentially promised for CoD in quantity and not quality. Next stop, Call of Duty: Aerosmith!
Update: During editing the names of the titles were moved and I somehow placed COD4:MW with Treyarch. We all know IW made it. Mistake fixed. [via Joystiq]
Holy Xbox Live Marketplace downloads soldier! Infinity Ward and Activision just gloated (and rightfully so) that the Call of Duty 4Variety Map Pack DLC has shattered XBLM download records. Within' nine days of being released, one million paid downloads were accounted for with players logging in 30 million plus hours of gameplay. No wonder Xbox Live crashed when the map pack released ... AMAZING!
Thinking about it, at 800 MS points a pop, the Variety Map Pack alone generated $10 million in sales in a little over a week. And that was just for four multiplayer maps! Crazy stuff. Congrats to Infinity Ward on a job well done and congrats to CoD4players for keeping the community high atop the Xbox Live charts for so long. Also, with these sales, you can almost guarantee another CoD4 map pack will see a release in the not too distant future.
These things are certainlybecomingpopular, we guess devs discovered that people like getting twice the reward for normal "work." Last time the event was the release of COD4's first map pack. This time it's the same thing, only for PS3, and since the maps are already out on 360, we get the Double XP Weekend too. The specific start and stop times for North America are from 12:01 AM on Friday, April 25 to 11:59 PM on Sunday, April 27. And for those European gamers the Double XP Weekend is completely different, beginning at 12:01 AM GMT on Friday, May 2 and concluding at 11:59 PM GMT on Sunday, May 4. Mark your calenders gamers!
Quick! Quick! Quick! If you're in the market for Call of Duty 4 (and don't mind not getting the GOTY edition) then head over to Amazon.com, because they're running a sweet Deal of the Day offering CoD4 for $34.99 with free shipping! We have no idea how long Amazon.com will keep these in stock but, even if they don't sell out, we can guarantee that the deal will expire tonight when the clock strikes midnight. Hurry kids and buy if you want a copy.
Also, after paging through our Sunday ads, we discovered that this week Circuit City is offering Condemned 2: Bloodshot for a cool $39. Just thought you'd like to know.
[Thanks, Ben]
Read - Call of Duty 4 for $35 Read - Condemned 2: Bloodshot for $39
Heads up to all the COD4 players out there! Remember back when the game launched last fall and there was a weekend event to celebrate? Sure you do. Well it's happening again next weekend. Thanks to a press release from Microsoft, we can report that next weekend you'll have the opportunity to play against the COD4 devs as well as an MMA fighter named Jens "Lil Evil" Pulver (though we honestly have no idea what significance being an MMA fighter has in the land of FPS). Not only that, but just playing during the weekend will enter you for all sorts of prizes. The times for the prizes and sweepstakes are Friday, April 18 at 12:01am through Sunday, April 20 at 11:59pm. The time that the MMA fighter and devs will be online is Friday, April 18 from 6-9pm. If you're at all interested register here. Good luck! (Note: All times are Eastern Daylight, EDT)
Many Xbox Live users trying to get their mitts on the new Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4 last Friday ran into some trouble. Some reported problems downloading the maps. Others apparently had problems even playing games on Xbox Live as a result of so many people attempting to download the maps at the same time. Understandably, this irked many gamers that were looking forward to earning double experience points over the weekend during COD4's double XP weekend. Good news then, as Infinity Ward's community guru fourzerotwo has made it known that the double XP weekend has been extended for another 24 hours. While concrete times aren't mentioned, he notes that the weekend has been extended to "Tuesday morning."
Giving gamers four more reasons to go online with Xbox Live's most popular shooter, Infinity Ward has released the first downloadable content for their 2007 smash-hit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. For 800 MS points the map pack adds familiar environments from the single-player experience as well as a modernized revision of a classic Call of Duty 2 map.
Jump in for a brief description of the four maps included in the Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4 and find out if the maps are worth your hard-earned MS Points.
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Considering that their game is the most-played game on Live, it seems a bit strange that Call of Duty4 would be taking cues from its defeated opponent. Yet to celebrate the release of the Variety Map pack, Infinity Ward is doing just that, taking a leaf out of Bungie's book and creating their very own version of the Double EXP Weekend. The COD4 weekend is a bit different than the Halo 3 system however. In Halo 3 the boosted EXP is limited to a specific playlist: Grifball. In Hal- er, we mean COD4, the EXP is doubled any time a match is played on the Variety DLC maps. So while you're effectively paying for the new EXP, it is good to see Infinity Ward taking preemptive steps to match anything that could lead to Halo 3 coming back to the top. Competition breeds excellence right?
We have no info on whether or not the Double EXP Weekend will be a recurring thing with COD4, but the current one ends on Sunday at midnight.
In continuation of the music themed Game with Fame we're being treated to lately, hard rock band Underoath will be playing both Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 on Xbox Live once a week for an entire month! Each Thursday at around 6:00PM eastern from now through May 1st, Underoath fans or Underoath hecklers can hop onto Xbox Live to game it up with the band members. Feel free to shoot them a friend request (a complete list of all six Gamertags posted after the jump) and start getting your Underoath shooting on next Thursday.
After a whole bunch of release dateconfusion, awkwardness and waiting. Your Call of Duty 4Variety Map Pack is finally here! Available for purchase off the Xbox Live Marketplace, the 800 Microsoft point Variety Map Pack includes four additional multiplayer maps to give your CoD4 gaming experience more ... variety. Creek, Chinatown, Broadcast and Killhouse all await your 444MB download. You've waited long enough, you've been patient, now go get 'em soldier ...
With the Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack seemingly only moments away, we thought it prudent to post this video montage of the new maps from GameTrailers. Strangely absent from the footage is Chinatown and Killhouse, which represent the two biggest departures from the maps already available with Call of Duty 4. We still get plenty of footage from Broadcast and Creek, though. We particularly like the look of Broadcast, which looks like a big violent mess (in a good way). Enjoy the video, and remember that all this fun can be yours in time for the weekend (at the cost of 800 MS Points anyway).
Apparently the guys over at the Infinity Ward studios heard that the internet was up in arms (and we even knew what day it was too) over the news that the Call of Duty 4 Variety DLC might be delayed by a week. In response to the internet craziness, their resident community guy, IAMfourzerotwo, took cahrge and implied directly that the whole thing really was an April Fools day joke and that we can all expect to be seeing the maps go live on the night of the 3rd or early in the morning on the 4th. Despite what any "official sources" might have to say about it, IAMfourtzerotwo notes that the news also goes for those players who had any kind of redemption code (GOTY buyers, etc). Fourtzerotwo mentions as well that the GOTY website will soon be changed to dispel any remaining confusion. Good news all around, and looks like we'll be playing new maps before the weekend gets here!
Considering the day that it is, we would usually have immediately discarded this news had it not come right from the official Game of the Year site. That site is now listing the Call of Duty 4Variety Map Pack for release on April 10th, rather than the previously scheduled date of April 3rd. This could just be Infinity Ward using the date to give its audience a bit of a scare at April Fools' expense, as the other official site has no date at all for the DLC, nor news about its delay. Combined with the fact that the GOTY edition is still set to release on the third, and the fact that the GOTY site doesn't appear to have full functionality, it seems unlikely that this news is accurate. Though of course there is still that possibility, as this is a rather humorless joke and we like to think that Infinity Ward is capable of something much funnier.
It says something when the best game being released this week is a re-release of a game that originally launched last November. Then again, it's not like it's that surprising. After all, the game in question is Call of Duty 4 and there is only one other game releasing this week. That game, if you just have to know, is Smash Court Tennis 3. No offense to Smash Court Tennis 3, but it's frickin' Call of Duty 4, right? Actually, to be more precise, it's Call of Duty 4Game of the Year Edition. Not only do you get COD4 goodness, but also a token to download the Variety Map Pack free of charge. Heck of a deal, no?
Update: Infinity Ward's 1.3 million number is referring to the average number of gamers (not games) that log onto Xbox Live daily to play CoD4. Apologies for the confusion.
The Xbox Live supremacy mud-slinging gets taken to a new level today with Infinity Ward comparing how many Xbox Live gamers log in to play games ofCall of Duty 4 versus its rival Halo 3. And let's just say there are bunches.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Infinity Ward producer Mark Rubin revealed that nearly 1.3 million gamers games of play CoD4 each and every day via Xbox Live alone. That gigantic number eclipses Halo 3's gamer base which hovers around the 1 million mark every day. Rubin also wanted to make sure that we understood that the 1.3 million number was just gamers who play on the 360 and that "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."
You hear that Halo 3 fanboys? You better start logging more games, gathering up your friends and relatives or claim Xbox Live defeat to your CoD4 conquerors. CoD4 has been highatop theLiveleaderboards for the past few months now and has been getting cocky. And rightfully so.
Quick! Quick! Quick! If you're in the market for Call of Duty 4 (and don't mind not getting the 
