Last week Activision canned their long running Guitar Hero series on consoles. Releasing a new version of the game every year had worn customers out, and it was decided that nobody would want yet another entry in the series. With Activision committed to releasing a new Call of Duty game every year, could the same thing happen to the shooter series?

That was the question Industry Gamers asked a series of industry analysts, who concluded that Call of Duty is unlikely to be milked to death in the same way that Guitar Hero was, though the risk is there. DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole says "there is a very real danger of milking a franchise and causing quality to decline, which can result in turning consumers off. With COD I think the danger is trying to maintain the quality of the franchise and making sure they don't release product just to release product."

Another analyst cited Call of Duty's multiplayer community as the source of its staying power, saying that Call of Duty "has a vibrant online community that keeps growing. When a new version comes out, the 'network effect' kicks in, and many people buy it because their friends have done so. The risk to the franchise is competition, not people tiring of the gameplay... CoD won't fade unless Activision opens the door to competition by making a bad game."

There's no shortage of competition. DICE are standing in the sidelines ready to take the crown. This year will likely see Battlefield 3 go head to head with the next Call of Duty game. What do you think, could yearly releases burn out the Call of Duty series?

Activision have revealed that the First Strike map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops will be out on PC by the end of March. Activision have also set up a new company devoted to creating new DLC for Call of Duty. Read on for details and the First Strike trailer.

Activision made the reveal when announcing its quarterly financial results last night. They mentioned that the pack would be out on PC this financial quarter, which ends in March. Activision also announced the formation of a new company devoted exclusively to creating digital downloads for Call of Duty. The team will be called Beachhead, and have been tasked with creating "best in class digital experience for Call of Duty." It looks as though we can look forward to more Call of Duty: Black Ops map packs and expansions in future.

First Strike contains four new multiplayer maps and a new "zombie experience."

Stadium - competitive map set in an Ice Hockey rink.
Kowloon - multiplayer map that takes place on the rooftops of Kowloon
Berlin Wall - A multiplayer fight for checkpoint Charlie.
Discovery - A competitive map set in an Antarctic research facility, based on the Reznov mission from the singleplayer campaign.
Ascension - New zombie map with new weapons and creatures to fight.

 
There's no exact release date or price set for the PC version yet, but it should be out before April 1. Check out the official Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike site for more information. Here's the First Strike trailer.

Just this morning Treyarch were discussing their commitment to squashing bugs in Call of Duty: Black Ops. A new patch for the game has been released fixing the theatre mode problems caused by the last patch. There are also optimisation upgrades that will let the game run 16x AA mode, and more fixes to further improve the game's stability and performance in multiplayer matches. Read on for the notes.

The patch notes were listed on Steam, and will be applied the next time you boot up the game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Multiplayer fixes

Backward compatibility for films created before Patch 1.05
Issues with weapon purchases after prestiging in some cases
Leaving a server and joining a different server, could briefly show the Map of the previous server
Duplicate player name on a server now becomes playername+slotnumber instead of ‘Unknown Soldier’
During a 'Demolition' match, the 'Auto-balancing teams' options may cause a 'Defender' player to respawn with a 'Bomb' icon in his inventory
Minor Shader Warming speed increase
One In The Chamber no longer counts democlient as a live player
16x AA menu option for compatible graphics cards
Additional Stability improvements

 

Treyarch's community manager has been talking about Call of Duty: Black Ops' launch problems, saying that releasing a bug-free game is unachievable, but that the team are committed to solving problems with the game as soon as they emerge.

Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin was speaking to Videogamer when he made the comments about Call of Duty: Black Ops, saying "It is unfortunate that those have to exist at all. In an ideal would we would love to ship a completely bug-proof game. I can't think of a single developer in the world, though, that could achieve that."

Olin, who recently listed "negative" gamers as one of the major problems facing the game industry, attributed Black Op's problems to the sheer number of people playing the game. "If you look at the population size of the Call of Duty franchise, just a single hour of gameplay collectively after the game's been out - you add up all the man-hours that all the fans put into it - that's more time than you could put into Quality Assurance in a lifetime."



A British consumer group, GamersVoice, recently reported Call of Duty: Black Ops to the Office of Fair Trading for its buggy state on release. Bugs have continued to affect the game. A recent patch caused movies made in the game's theatre mode to disappear. Olin says that Treyarch is committed to fixing bugs as quickly as possible. "When they pop up, though, it's really important that we are well equipped to quickly address them and quickly patch them."

"We've had, like, six or seven patches, depending on which platform you play on, since the game came out - so we're talking six or seven patches over the span of two to three months. That's a lot of post-release support, and that's something that we're going to continue - that's not going to stop."

"Even if the bug is only hurting a hundred fans, if we can find the cause we'll patch it."

In other Call of Duty: Black Ops news, Treyarch have recently talked favourably of the idea of a futuristic Call of Duty game. For more on the game, check out our review, and the official Call of Duty: Black Ops site.

Design Director of Treyarch has been speaking about the team's aspirations for Call of Duty: Black Ops, saying: “Every developer dreams of making the No.1 selling title in the history of gaming.” He listed Modern Warfare 2 as a great inspiration and the game the team most wanted to beat.

Speaking to MCV, Treyarch's Design Director, David Vonderhaar talked about Treyarch's desire to beat Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2. “You want to make the biggest, strongest, highest-rated, most critically acclaimed and best-selling video game on the planet. We looked at Modern Warfare 2 and said: ‘What an amazing benchmark, let’s go get it’. It drives a lot of what we do everyday.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops blew Modern Warfare 2 out of the water with massive first day sales. Treyarch shifted 5.6 million units in their first day, compared to Modern Warfare 2's 4.7 million. Now Treyarch are hoping to beat Infinity ward with first week sales of their first DLC pack, First Strike, which adds new maps to Call of Duty: Black Ops. Vonderhaar says that the motivation to compete with Modern Warfare 2 doesn't come from Activision, but from within the team.



“People don’t come by our offices and say: ‘Hey, this game sold this many map packs, you better do the same or all bets are off.’ Those aren’t conversations that happen. The team has a constant desire to one-up themselves, so the pressure comes internally.

”Our senior level designer, Phil Tasker, is always pushing and I am constantly pushing back saying: ‘Are you crazy? That’s so ambitious. How are we going to execute it?’ And he’s saying: ‘We’ve got to do it.’"

First Strike has already been released on Xbox 360, there's still no news of a PC release date, but Treyarch say there are "more details to come." You can check out some screens of the new maps contained in the pack here, or head over to the official First Strike site for more information.

A Game Director at Treyarch has said that a Call of Duty game set in the future "would be pretty fantastic". When asked if Treyarch would be up for creating a futuristic Call of Duty, he said "I think the answer is 'yes.'"

Game Director David Vonderhaar was talking to Machinima about the future of the Call of Duty series when he made the comments, saying "we have not announced any new Call of Duty games at this time but to answer his specific question I think, personally, it would be pretty fantastic to do near-future, you know? Not necessarily far-future,” adding that "I think it would be kind of a unique opportunity but the way that this works out is obviously more complicated than ‘Hey. Me and Treyarch are going to make a near-future shooter.’ It’s a tough question to answer."

Development of the Call of Duty games is handed off between Treyarch and Infinity Ward. Treyarch made last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops, and it looks as though a team effort from Infinity Ward, Raven and Sledgehammer will bring us Modern Warfare 3 later this year. Beyond that, the baton will likely pass back to Treyarch. What do you think, would you like to see a Call of Duty game set in the future?

Commence high-budget inter-developer slapfight! Duty Calls is Epic Games' riposte to the slew of military shooters on shop shelves: specifically Activision's Call of Duty series. The eagle-eyed among you might've noticed that from the name.

Duty Calls tells the serious and profound story of Some Soldier Guy, who's sent on A Serious Mission to kill A Bad Dude With An Eyepatch And A Dreadful Accent. Highlights include unlockable ranks (all the way to 'Sergeant of the Master Sergeants Most Extreme Person of Extreme Sergeants to the Max!'), a wide range of pickups (two, ranging from a stick to 500 sheets of wide-ruled paper), and an incongruous slow-motion section. All bullet sounds are replaced by the word 'boring', and each enemy announces his presence by way of describing exactly what he's doing at that moment. All in the name of building narrative, of course.

Conveniently, it also doubles as a promotional item for Bulletstorm. Duty Calls weighs 700ish MB, and qualifies as a big-ass download. Therefore, in the interests of saving your bandwidth (hello, Canadians!), I've posted screenshots of my playthrough below. It's all free, even if the install takes far too long.

The community manager for Call of Duty: Black Ops has spoken out against what he says is a "negative" culture among gamers, labelling it as one of the biggest problems facing the game industry.

Community Manager Josh Olin made the comments in an interview with NowGamer. When asked what the biggest problem facing the games industry today was, he said "as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow. Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving."

"More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about," he adds, saying "It’s a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by “pundits” and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian. The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do."

What do you reckon, have gamers forgotten what the industry is all about?