Activision just announced that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 will be getting a staggering amount of DLC over the next 9 months. Specifically, there will be 20 DLC packs (twenty!) for Modern Warfare 3 in the next 9 months. That’s more than one DLC every second week.

Which begs the question: how much DLC is too much? How much of this DLC was supposed to be in the game in the first place? A game which wasn’t that much different from previous CoD titles to begin with. And at one point do gamers just stop caring? While 20 DLC packs will no doubt generate a lot of revenue for Activision, it’s easy to assume that a large chunk of gamers will just get lost in all the content that’s available, and the fragmentation that could occur: if there are 20 map maps out there, it’ll spread the player base quite a lot, even with a game as popular as Modern Warfare 3. Want to play with your friend? You’ll need map pack #12. Want to play with another friend? You’ll need map pack #17 for that. And so on.

“Want to play with your friend? You’ll need map pack #12. Want to play with another friend? You’ll need map pack #17 for that.”The announcement of so many DLC packs also seems like a selling point for Activision’s Call of Duty Elite service. Elite membership costs $50/year and includes free DLC, but that’s $50 on top of the regular game’s $60 bucks. And on top of the Xbox Live subscription, which is another $50/year. Yes, gaming is getting very expensive. At least multiplayer gaming on the Xbox 360.

While we can’t say that we’re surprised over this (it’s Activision and Call of Duty, after all), hopefully it won’t be a direction that other publishers take. Depending on how gamers respond to this, it has the potential to become the norm — a somewhat lackluster game, coupled with a ton of DLC and a “premium” service sprinkled on top.

Remember when maps used to be free? Remember when instead of a few maps for $15, we got huge expansion packs for $20? Those were the good old days…

If you’ve played Call of Duty or Modern Warfare on Xbox Live, you’ve no doubt run into obnoxious 12-year olds who think they can “trash talk”, but the kid you’re about to see takes the cake. Someone take this idiot to a doctor. And tell his mom to cancel his Xbox Live subscription.

Despite fierce competition from shooters such as Battlefield 3 and Gears of War, Activision’s Call of Duty titles still top the activity charts on Xbox Live. For the week of November 21 — Thanksgiving week — Modern Warfare 3 took the top spot, followed by another Call of Duty title, Black Ops, on number 2. Not only that, the two-year old Modern Warfare 2 was ranked 6th. This is another testament of just how popular Activision’s franchise is among Xbox 360 players.

Other shooters on the list include Battlefield 3 (4th), Halo Reach (7th), and Gears of War 3 (8th). You can check out the full list at Major Nelson.

Activision’s brand new serives, Call of Duty Elite, which gives players a wide variety of options when it comes to stats tracking, tips, map overviews, not to mention free DLC if you have the premium option, recently launched with Modern Warfare 3. To remind all the millions of MW3 players out there, Activision released a new trailer to promote Call of Duty Elite.

Sony has announced a brand new PS3 bundle which includes a 160 GB PS3 console, the game Call of Duty Black Ops and the First Strike DLC, all for $299 — the regular price of a 160 GB PS3. Not a bad deal if you’re in the market for a PS3 console, as you’ll be getting a free game and DLC. The bundle will be released on May 31, and if you want one, you should hurry, because they’ll be made in limited quantity.

Black Ops is already one of the best selling games of all time, and this new promotion is sure to move a few more copies for Activision. The First Strike DLC includes new multiplayer maps, one of which is a zombie map.

Activision has released the first gameplay trailer of Modern Warfare 3, which, surprise surprise, looks a lot like the previous games, only bigger. This time, as the trailers show, the war is taken to the streets of New York, Germany and England, in what looks like giant set piece battles which Call of Duty is known for.

Despite a few leaks last week regarding Modern Warfare 3, Activision is still on track with their regular schedule. They’ve just announced that Modern Warfare 3 will be officially unveiled on May 23, during the 4th game in the Western Conference NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

However, as Activision points out on their Modern Warfare 3 Facebook page, the “unveiling” is set to be yet another teaser, which leads us to believe it might just be showing one of the teasers we’ve already seen.

We dunno about you, but teasing a game can quickly become boring and downright annoying. Just reveal the game already, Activision. If not, then stay silent until you reveal it at E3 or something.

Finally, after much wait and speculation, Activision has announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Only detail given so far is that the game will hit the store shelves in the first week of November, like its predecessors, other than that, they’ve released a bunch of new teaser, the first of which you can see above. It’s simply called “America”, and it looks like the fight is brought not just back home to the US, but also to other countries, as the other teasers reveal. We’ve got three more teaser trailers after the break. Read on… READ ON »

Call of Duty has time and time again managed to be without a doubt the most popular first person shooter franchise on the market. Modern Warfare 2 really solidified the hype surrounding the previous release, Call of Duty 4, and Black Ops only furthered that managing to break records and sell like hot cakes. However, while Black Ops was a highly successful game everyone knows that the game we’re really waiting for is none other than Modern Warfare 3.

Unfortunately, there has been virtually no news to share regarding Modern Warfare 3′s gameplay but today something interesting has leaked. What you see above is reportedly a leaked copy of the official Modern Warfare 3 logo. Of course, the chances of this being a Photoshopped fake seem quite high but take it as you will.

If the past is anything to go by, expect Modern Warfare 3 to hit store shelves sometime later this year.

Game analysts are like any other analysts predicting the market, sometimes they’re wrong, sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re “what they hell were they thinking”-wrong. Industry analyst Doug Creutz from Cowen and Company predicts that the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 will sell 25 million units worldwide, while it’s main competitor, Battlefield 3, will only sell 10 million units.

He bases his estimate on the fact that the previous Call of Duty game, Black Ops, sold 14 million copies, and Modern Warfare 3 is surely set to eclipse that. Which we agree, but 25 million? If we had to put our analyst hat on, we’d say Modern Warfare 3 sells 15 million units, tops. Which is about, oh, $900 million in revenue? Of which Activision will get $500 million.