September has been a good month to be a Call of Duty fan with several exciting announcements released regarding the franchise. From legal battles to local servers and of course, the Call of Duty: Next event, here is a quick update on what has happened.
South Africans can be excited as after almost three years, Call of Duty Mobile, one of the most successful mobile games of all time, has finally received local dedicated servers. Players no longer have to battle severe latency and can enjoy a seamless experience. Hopefully, this means we’ll also have local servers for Warzone Mobile. Wait? Warzone Mobile?!
Activision has officially announced that Verdansk is returning with Warzone going mobile in 2023! In the typical battle royale format, the game will have no bots or AI and support up to 120 real players. Warzone Mobile will share battle pass progression and loadouts with Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2. Players will have the chance to pre-register for the game early and doing so will net rewards at launch. You can currently pre-register on Android via the Google Play Store, but it is not yet available on iOS.
The original Modern Warfare 2 released in 2009 is regarded as one of the best Call of Duty games of all time and when Activision announced their upcoming game will also be called Modern Warfare 2, it got a lot of fans excited. This is however not a remaster of the original and instead a sequel to the Modern Warfare that was released in 2019. We got our first look at the new Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 at the Call of Duty: Next event last night. Among some of the announcements is an exciting new 32v32 ground war mode which appears to take inspiration from the Battlefield franchise, and a completely new map for Warzone 2 including locations from the original MW2 game such as Terminal, now known as Airport, as well as Quarry. Warzone 2 will be launching alongside Modern Warfare 2 in November. The beta for Modern Warfare 2 begins on PlayStation today for players who have pre-ordered the game, for those that haven’t pre-ordered yet the open beta begins on Sunday. Xbox and PC join the fun the following week starting on the 22nd.
Lastly, it was announced earlier this month that Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision will be investigated following growing concerns that the deal is anti-competitive. What does this mean and why is it important? Although already denied by Microsoft, Sony and other competitors fear Call of Duty games could become exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox. One of the greatest features of Call of Duty is the ability to connect with your friends in a seamless cross-platform experience. Exclusivity or preference for a specific console will certainly cut a lot of gamers out and therefore these investigations are important in order to get assurances that all gamers will be able to access the games “on equal terms and in perpetuity.”
Regardless of the device you play your games on, be it mobile, PC or console, the Call of Duty franchise will be available to you with exciting new games in the coming months and years. As we have only scraped the surface of announcements from the Call of Duty: Next event, for those who missed it, the full event can be watched here.