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Call of Duty: Ghosts dedicated servers not restricted to Xbox One
Call of Duty: Ghosts' dedicated servers aren't only on Xbox One, but are coming to "next gen," "current gen," and PC versions too. The news comes via Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin, the exec producer careful to not mention specific platforms in his Twitter announcement. "We've already mentioned dedicated servers as part of the overall plan to improve connectivity," Rubin wrote. "Dedicated servers will be used on current gen, next gen and PC with Ghosts. And, in order to make sure that people have the best possible experience regardless of platform, location or connection, Ghosts will be using a hybrid system of dedicated servers and listen servers. So no matter where you are the game will always be trying to give you the best online performance possible. "There is also some great new tech in the matchmaking system that will place players in matches that have the best combined overall connectivity performance. Again these are just some of the things that are going into Call of Duty: Ghosts to give players a great online experience." Rubin's tweet comes after he announced Ghosts would use the Xbox One's cloud for dedicated servers. It's unclear if Rubin's avoiding mentioning other platforms because of (ridiculous seeming) red tape, or because certain version(s) don't feature dedicated servers. When one Twitter user asked him if PS3 and PS4 were included, Rubin replied, "I can't call out other platforms by name but one might assume that from what I wrote." We'll know soon enough since the Ghosts train is fast approaching. First stop is PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U on November 5, followed by PS4 and Xbox One at launch.
Call of Duty: Ghosts executive producer discusses next-gen transition, new engine
After the dust settled on last week's multiplayer reveal for Call of Duty: Ghosts, Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin spoke with Joystiq about the franchise's new current- and next-gen engine, in-game female soldiers and the corporate culture at a very different-looking Infinity Ward studio. Rubin also detailed the process and philosophy behind linking in-game progression to Call of Duty profiles, so that players won't be forced to restart their online careers if transitioning between current and next-gen consoles. For more on Call of Duty: Ghosts (with exclusive in-game footage), make sure to watch Joystiq's hands-on video preview and the interview with CEO of Activision Publishing, Eric Hirshberg. Call of Duty: Ghosts is coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this year, along with Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U and PC versions on November 5.
Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer gender options about 'appreciating' female fans
Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin tells Joystiq that adding playable female soldiers in Call of Duty: Ghosts was to recognize the franchise's complete audience. Women have been added as part of the multiplayer customization in Ghosts, set to arrive on November 5. "Honestly, adding female soldiers to character customization wasn't about trying to lure more people into the game. It was actually just about acknowledging the people who already play our game," Rubin says. Enngine limitations were another contributing factor in the franchise's lack of playable female soldiers. "It wasn't until we rewrote the way character memory is handled - that we could do 'Create-a-Soldier,' that we could do customized characters - that the possibility of having female soldiers really came to fruition," Rubin explains. "Bringing female characters into Call of Duty: Ghosts wasn't something that was limited generation, it was limited by the engine itself."
Call of Duty: Ghosts gets rickety skyscraper as pre-order bonus
It's preemptive business as usual with Call of Duty: Ghosts, which now boasts a pre-order incentive in the form of a multiplayer map. Dubbed "Free Fall," the freebie environment is meant to reflect the dynamic events that characterize and alter the environments in this iteration of Call of Duty's multiplayer suite. Taking place in the halls of a skyscraper on the verge of collapse, Free Fall represents "just one of the many new approaches we're putting into Ghosts' multiplayer across the board," says Executive Producer Mark Rubin. "There's so much more that we look forward to sharing in the weeks to come." The weeks to come – between now and the game's PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launch on November 5 – will likely be spent cleaning up the wide-scale urban damage left after Activision's skyscraper motion-capture session.%Gallery-192851%
Inhabit one soldier (and his dog) in Call of Duty: Ghosts
The next-generation engine debuted in Call of Duty: Ghosts will not only power the franchise's signature 60 frames-per-second gameplay, but a more coherent experience overall. According to Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin, Ghosts will stick with the same protagonist and squad of soldiers throughout the game. "If you look at Call of Duty in general, you're on the high-tech, super-powered forces. You're America, you're strong, you're Britain, Germany," Rubin told Joystiq at a recent press event in Los Angeles. "It just felt like, what if we could reverse those roles a bit, what if we had America as the underdog and not the superpower? What if we had some other countries as the big superpower and we're fighting against this more technologically superior force. And so that is really where we got: now we've got this technologically superior super force, they devastate the western world, the US, with a weapon of mass destruction of some kind - I'm not going to go into that, it will come later, and what we did is we had that event start the game, but the story picks up ten to fifteen years later and you as a soldier grew up in this new changed world." That soldier will be a focal point for the game, Rubin said, and won't contribute to the fractured, multi-perspective narratives for which the series has drawn ire in the past. "It's not like before where you have these multiple sides and trot around. You're pretty much the same person throughout." You'll also be accompanied by a Navy SEAL dog (not to be confused with a Moreau-style seal-dog), which can sniff out dangers and aid the team in several ways as a companion AI of sorts. As you might expect from a production of Ghosts' caliber, Infinity Ward did full motion capture on a retired SEAL dog.
Modern Warfare 3 Elite Premium getting Spec Ops mission, three Faceoff maps tomorrow on 360 [update]
Modern Warfare 3 "Elite" premium subscribers on 360 are getting a brand new Spec Ops mission and three new Faceoff missions tomorrow. That's according to the Twitter account of Infinity Ward Executive Producer Mark Rubin, who named the three maps "Vortex," U-Turn," and "Intersection," and the mission "Arctic Recon."Activision's official content calendar isn't updated to reflect Rubin's tweet just yet, but we expect it'll show up not too far from now. Despite the calendar showing three pieces of content – dubbed "map," "mission," and "classified" – don't panic. Rubin said "those guys need to update the categories to be more accurate," which translates to "I swear this is really the truth, regardless of what that silly old calendar says."As always, the content will show up a bit later for MW3 players on PlayStation 3 and PC, per Microsoft's long-standing exclusivity agreement with Acti. We reached out to the publisher for more information, screens and video, and will update this post when we know more.Update: The Infinity Ward Twitter account just dropped the image above of Spec Ops mission "Arctic Recon," and said that only two of the three Faceoff maps Rubin spoke of – "U-Turn" and "Vortext" – will go live tomorrow. The same account posted earlier that three Faceoff maps are included. We're trying to clarify the situation with Activision.Update 2: The tweet was deleted and updated to reflect all three maps. Okay then, to be clear: three Faceoff maps ("Vortex," "U-Turn," and "Intersection") and one Spec Ops map ("Arctic Recon").
The grizzled guns and leaping explosives of Modern Warfare 3
In the latest dev diary showcasing upcoming FPS blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, project leads Mark Rubin and Michael Condrey drill into the game's weapon leveling system. But while it's thrilling to learn about the game's customization updates, we're most excited by that jumping explosive. Jumping explosives!
