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GameStop Alone Sold 600,000 Memberships to Call of Duty’s Elite Service
Call of Duty Elite’s launch was rocky, Activision tells us, missteps were made, but we’ve never had any sense of just how many paying customers it might have attracted, until now. During their third-quarter earnings report yesterday, GameStop spilled the beans on just how many people picked up the paid version of the community-building, stat-tracking,…
By Brian Crecente Published November 18, 2011 -
So 53% of Battlefield 3 Players On Xbox 360 Also Played Call of Duty
Not content with the knowledge that Modern Warfare 3 was always going to sell a ton more copies than supposed rival Battlefield 3, gaming research firm Raptr decided to track how many hours people spent actually playing both games. Using a combination of data from a 10-million “gamer network” and a 6000-person survey, Raptr found…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 18, 2011 -
Modern Warfare 3 Developer Pleads for Better Metascores, Discovers That’s a Stupid Idea
Why someone from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 developer Sledgehammer would consider its fan-voted Metacritic score worth a get-out-the-vote tweet is utterly beyond me. It is by far the most polarizing title among gaming’s annual releases, so a user score of 1.7 is probably to be expected, given how much gaming’s snobs cognoscenti despise…
By Owen Good Published November 17, 2011 -
It’s Going to Take a “Couple of Weeks” to Make Call of Duty Elite Fully Functional, Says Developer
It wasn’t the numbers that knocked Call of Duty: Elite on its ass the day it went live, it was the questions. Speaking with Kotaku earlier this week Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision, walked us through how one of the most experienced online gaming companies in the world was blindsided by the…
By Brian Crecente Published November 17, 2011 -
Call of Duty Pulls In More than Three-Quarters of a Billion Dollars in Five Days, And Other Insane Numbers
Following in the footsteps of the last three Activision military shooters, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had a record-breaking, money-printing first five days, pulling in more than $775 million in worldwide sales, Activision reports. “With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, Call of Duty…
By Brian Crecente Published November 17, 2011 -
Innovation Has Never Been the Cornerstone of the Video Game Industry
As expected, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a huge seller and is breaking all kinds of sales records. It’s been parodied on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and is being blamed for the loss of the Louisville Cardinals this past weekend. The game has its fans and it has its critics, and…
Scott Patterson Published November 16, 2011 -
Black Ops Finally Surrenders Top Slot on Xbox Live—to Modern Warfare 3
Fending off challenges from Gears of War 3 and Battlefield 3 during their launch weeks, Call of Duty: Black Ops at last met its match this past week—in its successor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox Live’s Major Nelson reports Modern Warfare 3 was the console service’s most popular game for the past week,…
By Owen Good Published November 16, 2011 -
Call of Duty Thief Escapes in Waiting Getaway Car
Is it just me or are Call of Duty thefts starting to sound more and more like missions from the game? The latest snatch and grab of the Activision shooter happened last week when a man swiped ten copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from a display stand at a Tesco in the…
By Brian Crecente Published November 16, 2011 -
Call of Duty Elite Is Coming to PC. One Day.
The stat-tracking, community-driven Call of Duty: Elite is still missing in action. Problems have continued to plague the free and premium versions. It’s still broken Previously, Elite‘s developers stated in a now-erased tweet that it “cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC.” Now, it looks like there will be…
By Brian Ashcraft Published November 16, 2011 -
Elite Update: Blah, Blah, Blah, It’s Still Broken
A week after the tremendously successful release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a game that more than 6.5 million people picked up on the first day, the massive community-driven, stat-tracking element of the game remains unstable at best. Call of Duty: Elite was meant to herald a new era for the annual Activision…
By Brian Crecente Published November 15, 2011 -
Reviews
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: The Kotaku Review
Liquid fast, meticulously polished, wickedly consuming: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t deliver stories or engender emotion in its players, but rather deals in raw adrenaline. A match of Modern Warfare 3 is punctuated by the rush of a well-placed shot, the anger at a surprise, unjust death. Infinity Ward’s latest iteration on the…
By Brian Crecente Published November 15, 2011 -
The Hell Is Up with Chickens in Modern Warfare 3?
World War III throws the globe into chaos. Cities are being destroyed. People are fighting. People are dying. And what are the chickens doing? Dancing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released on Nov. 8. It has chickens. MW3: SPAZZMATICA CHICKEN POLKA DANCE [YouTube Thanks, Scott!] You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of…
By Brian Ashcraft Published November 15, 2011 -
Belgium Mom Wraps Up a Profanity-Laced Call of Duty Session With Some Gunfire
This charming foul-mouthed hardcore gaming mom helps to elucidate some of the problems we all stumble across while playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 online. Some weapons, she points out, are a little overpowered. The game allows you to transition to the scope view on a gun a bit too quickly and other players…
By Brian Crecente Published November 14, 2011 -
Is This the Reason People Love Call of Duty?
You can thank/blame marketing and a Michael Bay-on-steroids storyline all you want, but there’s a reason people come back to Call of Duty games year after year, and it has nothing to do with zombies or sideburns. It has to do with how the game feels There’s a quickness to Call of Duty games that…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 14, 2011 -
A Dozen Reasons To Hate Call of Duty Games
Call of Duty is reviled among a vocal group of gamers. When they read that the latest iteration of the series is selling well, or is well reviewed, or is being played by a lot of people, they seem to take it personally. That’s always baffled me. So on Twitter today I asked the 13,500…
By Brian Crecente Published November 11, 2011 -
The Continued Popularity of Call of Duty’s Two, Three and Four Year Old Games
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s record-breaking, first-day sales are impressive, but almost more impressive is the life these Call of Duty games seem to have online. This morning I hopped online to see how the past four year’s worth of Call of Duty games were doing online. Yes, people still do play the original…
By Brian Crecente Published November 11, 2011 -
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Shatters All Sales Records, Nears Half a Billion Dollars in Day One Sales
More than 6.5 million people bought copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in North America and the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours of its release pulling in more than $400 million, Activision said today That makes it one of the largest entertainment launch in history, with sales of more than $400…
By Brian Crecente Published November 11, 2011 -
Why It’s Stupid To Hate Call of Duty So Damn Much
Among many of those who like to label themselves as a “gamer”, there is no franchise more reviled than Call of Duty. The merest mention of its name sends people flying to post anonymous comments blasting the game as the very model of everything that’s wrong with video games today. Take a look at any…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 11, 2011 -
‘Blowing Up’ a Best Buy Was Just a Figure of Speech, Says Modern Warfare Fan Facing a Shitload of Trouble
Described in a police report as plotting to blow up a Best Buy and murder its employees because they didn’t have his preordered copy of Modern Warfare 3, a Denver-area man says his upset outburst was interpreted to an illogical extreme just to punish him for being upset on the game’s highly anticipated rollout night.…
By Owen Good Published November 10, 2011 -
Activision Hands Out a Free Month to Paying Members of Call of Duty Elite As Outage Continues
Call of Duty Elite remains basically down and out three days after the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Activision said today they will be extending all one-year paid memberships to the service by 30 days to help make up for the outage. They are also extending the ability to sign up as…
By Brian Crecente Published November 10, 2011