Items tagged with Activision
Talk about intense—publisher Activision and developer Sledgehammer Games have released the first game trailer for the Call of Duty: WWII campaign, and it is a powerful one. The nearly two and a half minute clip does not feel like it is showcasing a game, but is something you would expect to see Hollywood put out for a full fledged movie. Part of that is due to this campaign being a story-driven one. And of course the content plays a big role—is is World World II we are talking about, and about midway through the trailer it becomes clear that even though this particular story is fictional, Activision and Sledgehammer Games will be tapping into emotions based on very real atrocities, and specifically...
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The official trailer for Destiny 2 already has us all jacked up for the game's release, but now that we have seen it running at 4K Ultra HD at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, we are chomping at the bit (or champing at the bit, if being grammatically correct—look it up) to spend some hands-on time with this multiplayer title. You can see it in 4K as well, courtesy of NVIDIA. With Activision and Bungie's blessing no doubt, NVIDIA posted a minute-long video to YouTube showing the forthcoming Destiny 2 beta for PC running in glorious 4K. It takes some serious PC horsepower to game at 4K, but if your system can handle it, you are welcome to play Destiny 2 at that resolution, and do so without...
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It seems like the more time passes, the more caveats Bungie decides to add to its upcoming epic adventure game, Destiny 2. Through a new entry in Bungie's help database, we learn that Destiny 2 is going to be beyond fussy when it comes to things like overlays and screen captures. Bungie wants to make sure that people don't inject code into the game for the sake of cheating, so it's being extra careful. In the help entry, it's made clear that software that records as "Game Capture" will not work, which includes OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) and XSplit. The same tools appear to work fine as long as "Screen Capture" is chosen instead. That's a problem for those that like to play their games in...
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered was highly anticipated by fans of the Call of Duty franchise when it arrived with the Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition, and the game’s big standalone arrival came yesterday. Activision hyped up the release noting the inclusion of the full campaign mode along with all of the infamous multiplayer maps that made the game a hit. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered features fully improved texture resolution and detail, revamped animation, remastered audio and much more,” writes Activision. “Fans can relive the full, iconic story campaign as they're transported around the globe with Capt. Price, Gaz and Soap across all the missions from the original game,...
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Activision and Call of Duty: WWII developer Sledgehammer Games hit a bit of a bump in the road over the weekend, when an unfinished trailer for game’s zombie mode leaked to the internet. Sledgehammer co-founder Glenn Schofield took new of the leak hard, writing on Twitter: You spend almost three years on something & with 5 days until reveal some &$#%}!! leaks our trailer. Bummed, disappointed. — Glen Schofield (@GlenSchofield) July 15, 2017 Schofield and another co-founder, Michael Condrey, asked gamers to avoid watching the leaked trailer and wait for the official reveal that was scheduled for Comic Con. Well, the wait is over and Activision today debuted the reveal trailer for Call...
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This week’s San Diego Comic-Con was supposed to be a rather joyous occasion for the Sledgehammer Games. The dev studio has already revealed its involvement on the latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: WWII. However, Sledgehammer has been rather tight-lipped about the game's upcoming zombie mode. Unfortunately for Sledgehammer, the trailer for the zombie mode leaked to the interwebs over the weekend, just days ahead of when it was scheduled to be unveiled for fans. For the folks that have worked long and hard on the zombie mode, which is titled “Army of the Dead”, the leak has been a bit of a bummer, obviously - though a leak is sometimes the best hype. Glenn Schofield...
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Would you pay full price—or close to full price—for a game that is nearly a decade old? Activision is banking on Call of Duty fans doing exactly that when the standalone version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered ships later this month. If you want the full experience, you'll have to cough up $40 for the core game, plus another $15 for the accompanying DLC that includes extra maps and other additional content. Activision is catching a fair amount of heat from gamers on this one. Initially, the controversy surrounding the remastered release was Activision's decision to bundle it with the Digital Deluxe, Legacy Pro, and Legacy versions of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. At its cheapest,...
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Activision just launched the reveal trailer and announced release date for Call of Duty: WWII. The game will launch on in November and was described by Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg as “bringing an intense, visceral, boots on the ground gameplay”. Many of the hints reddit users dropped last week were confirmed today by Activision. The game will include a new “War Mode” in which players tackle famous World War II battles. Multiplayer will include objectives that will differ depending on whether a player has chosen to fight for the Allies or Axis. Players will be able to spend time at “Headquarters”, a “robust social space” in between matches. Multiplayer will be available to test at E3 2017...
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Call of Duty is going back to its roots, and the excitement surrounding its announcement is tangible. Fans have taken to reddit with pictures of boxes and advertisements for the upcoming shooter. These leaks have revealed game shots, retail packaging, and most importantly, the game's November 3rd release date.One photo with an advertisement for the Xbox games states that the Call of Duty: WWII, “tells the story of the unbreakable brotherhood of common men fighting to preserve freedom in a world on the brink of tyranny”. Players will land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and experience the war’s most iconic European battles. The photos indicate that the game will offer three modes....
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Activision’s Call of Duty series is definitely going back to its roots. As we reported late last month based on leaked materials for the game, the latest installment in the franchise will be called simply Call of Duty: WWII. The announcement of the game was made this afternoon via the official website for Call of Duty, and the worldwide premier of the new title will take place April 26th at 10AM PST. The about-face comes after the Call of Duty series increasingly began moving away from its “real world” roots and into future combat environments. This shift in scope came to a head last year when Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was announced. Reaction to the game was negative from the very start,...
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We have the feeling that Activision Blizzard wasn’t anticipating that backlash that came with the announcement of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in May of last year. However, once the initial trailer for the game popped up on YouTube, the venom flew furiously at the thought of not only taking combat into space, but also messing around with gameplay mechanics. The Moonraker-esque battles in the trailer lead gamers to launch a massive “dislike” campaign on YouTube (as of today, the reveal trailer has 3.4 million dislikes compared to 567,000 likes). So, what is Activision Blizzard to do in order to right the ship? Well, it was announced that Sledgehammer Games is taking the lead for the 2017 Call...
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Activision Blizzard Launches Consumer Products Division Spearheaded By Former Mattel And Disney Exec
If you're a fan of any Activision or Blizzard game series, then there's a new reason to be excited. Announced today, parent company Activision Blizzard is launching a new division focused squarely on consumer products. Love Overwatch? Expect to see an even greater selection with your geek gear soon. To launch this division, former Mattel and Disney executive Tim Kilpin was brought in, who helped both companies achieve great success in similar areas. He says, "I’m excited to lead this newly-formed division and join Activision Blizzard’s already incredibly talented consumer products team in delivering powerful new partnerships and even more touchpoints to audiences." While fans of Blizzard or Activision...
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It's the end of an era. In a new post made on the World of Warcraft website, Blizzard announced that the Battle.net name is being pushed aside. From now on, the company will begin transitioning its front-facing services to ones that begin with the name "Blizzard", such as Blizzard Voice and Blizzard Streaming, which have already been revealed. When launched twenty years ago, Battle.net was setup to become an integral service for all forthcoming Blizzard titles. It was in effect the portal that allowed people to play their favorite Blizzard titles together, with the original Diablo becoming the first to make use of it on November 30, 1996. The biggest reasons for Blizzard's decision? One is the...
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Following months of intense anticipation, Destiny players can finally geek it up with the game's newest expansion: Rise of Iron. While it's been said that RoI is not quite as large as The Taken King was, players shouldn't be at a loss of things to do for quite a while. If you pushed hard to hit a Light Level of 335 prior to the launch of Rise of Iron, prepare to weep as it's now unimpressive. As of today, the maximum Light Level becomes 385, and as soon as Bungie decides to release the Heroic version of the new raid, it'll jump to 400. Speaking of raid, because no one is going to be an appropriate Light Level for the new raid right now, Bungie is holding off on releasing it for a couple of days....
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One of the most frustrating things to occur in an online first-person shooter is to die when you truly believe you shouldn't have. Just made it around the corner in the nick of time? While it might appear that you should have lived, the server's netcode couldn't keep up, and still registered it as a kill for the opposition. Apparently, this happens a bit too much in Overwatch, reducing the fun in what's supposed to be a premier online FPS. Well, this issue is one that Blizzard has been taking very seriously, and the fruits of its labor can now be seen through a "High Bandwidth" mode. Based on the original netcode, it's clear that Blizzard designed Overwatch to support low-bandwidth gamers, but...
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Blizzard Introduces Live Facebook Streaming For Battle.net Games Like Overwatch, WoW And Hearthstone
Streaming is big business, and almost every developer and gamer wants in. For gamers, this couldn't be more true than with Blizzard's portfolio of games. Games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch are full of moments well-worth streaming, so in the latest version of Blizzard's own game client the company has built new streaming options right in. Unfortunately for many gamers, Blizzard's streaming platform of choice is Facebook. While Facebook itself would love for its own social network to become the de facto place for streaming, it's a website that tries to cater to everyone and everything and thus it hasn't had great success attracting hardcore game streamers that don't care for all of the...
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If your brain hasn't already shut down from the sheer amount of details to come out of this year's E3, then here's something else to shove down your gullet: a new Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer. Let's state the obvious: Call of Duty trailers are never received well by those who love to troll. Even those who wouldn't have played the game anyway love to jump in and toss in their ridicule. It's a bit odd, but it is what it is. The backlash led the original trailer release to score a staggering 2.8 million dislikes at YouTube, versus its 460 thousand likes. That caused Activision's CEO to come out and handle the situation like a champ. With how that first trailer was received, though, it...
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While the world's leading GPU vendors can't seem to get enough of 4K resolutions, making sure to promote it with the release of each new top-end model in recent years, those who've discovered ultrawide resolutions tend to just not care about it. The reasons for that can be explained with simple math. At 21:9, ultrawide monitors can increase what you see in a game by just over 30% compared to 16:9 (4K, 1080p, etc) models. That benefit ties into a second one: even the mammoth resolution of 3440x1440 (as is equipped with Acer's incredible Predator X34) has just 2/3rds the pixels of 4K, meaning that you not only see more of your game, it'll perform a lot better, too. Acer's Predator X34...
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There are few things that can ruin an online game quite as fast as a cheater. If a bug is exploited, a cheater can turn an otherwise great game into a downright frustrating one, and it seems this is a point Blizzard understands well. While cheaters are almost expected in any online game, Blizzard is having none of it with Overwatch. In an official forum post, Blizzard Community Manager Lylirra says, "Play nice; play fair" is one of the company's core values, and it's something that's built into each and every Blizzard title. What does that mean in Overwatch? There's no lenience with cheaters - none. Lylirra writes, "If a player is found to be cheating—or using hacks, bots, or third-party software...
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If there was any doubt about Activision's interest in eSports, it was squashed this past January when the company acquired Major League Gaming - MLG for short - for $46 million. Furthering its love for all things competitive gaming is a brand-new eSports network that runs through its MLG.tv Web portal. Oh - things are going to be getting good. At the IAB Digital Content NewFronts 2016 conference, Activision showed off "EVE". No, not the game, but 'Enhanced Viewing Experience', an HD video stream that delivers a wealth of statistics during a match. The network's host is Chris Pucket, someone who has a ton of experience in the eSports realm, from both the gaming and broadcasting standpoint. Activision...
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Hate is alive and well in the online community. If companies, movies studios or even game studios put out a product that ticks off the wrong group of people, the backlash can come swiftly. We saw that earlier this week as the new Ghostbusters reboot became the most disliked movie trailer in YouTube history. Now, gamers are drinking gallons of Haterade to express their displeasure with the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer that debuted on Monday. Like we saw with the Ghostbusters trailer, the online community organized a massive “dislike” campaign to trash the upcoming “sci-fi” title. As of this writing, the reveal trailer has nearly 9.2 million views, almost 202,000 likes and a whopping...
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When can you pretty much guarantee that the multiplayer part of a certain game is more popular than its single-player campaign? When the publisher decides to release an MP-only "starter pack", of course. That's exactly what Activision has just done with Call of Duty: Black Ops III. It's no secret that the Call of Duty series is one of the most popular destinations for gaming on Earth, with each release selling in quantities that are enviable by every other developer and publisher out there. So why, then, would Activision risk hurting its sales by releasing an MP-only pack? By stripping many features and capping the level - those crafty buggers! But what else can we expect for the asking price...
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