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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 Video Preview
Call of Duty: Ghosts brings Activision's behemoth to next-generation consoles later this year, launching for both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. While the game features a new engine, destructibility and new customization options, one of the biggest (and more surprising) barriers was commanding the slightly smaller Xbox One controller. Ghosts also represents refinements made throughout the lifespan of the franchise, including a new value-based perk system and slick traversal options (next-gen stuff, like sliding and leaning!). Watch Joystiq control and bumble its way through combat, with exclusive footage, in our latest video preview. Call of Duty: Ghosts is set to arrive on next-gen systems this year from developers Infinity Ward, Raven Software and Neversoft. The shooter launches on November 5 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, with a Wii U version in the works from developer Treyarch.%Gallery-196008%
Activision Publishing CEO on Call of Duty: Ghosts investment, pre-order pacing and death threats
After dropping the mic and cutting to the first multiplayer reveal for Call of Duty: Ghosts yesterday, Activision Publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, spoke with Joystiq about the franchise's first console cycle refresh as a cultural icon. Earlier this month, Hirshberg noted that the transition to a new generation of consoles had negatively impacted pre-order sales. Yesterday he expanded on that thought, explaining that much of the hesitation is because players have not yet decided on their next platform or even if they will join the next-generation at launch. Hirshberg also took a moment to respond to overly aggressive (and downright scary) players, such as those that threatened physical harm upon Treyarch's studio design director David Vonderhaar after announcing slight tweaks to weapons and skills in Black Ops 2, calling their actions "unacceptable." Call of Duty: Ghosts will be available "across all the platforms" on November 5, Hirshberg says.
Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer trailer and screens materialize
Activision gave us our first look at Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer earlier today in a livestream presentation. If you missed it, you can at least catch up with the reveal trailer above, and check out some fresh screens in our gallery.
Call of Duty: Ghosts profiles, DLC transfer from current-gen to next-gen
Call of Duty: Ghosts stats will transfer fluidly across Xbox One and Xbox 360, or PS4 and PS3, Infinity Ward announced during its livestream event today. Individual profiles will transfer from current-gen to next-gen consoles, and vice versa. Ghosts profiles will not be transferrable across console families. Players will be able to upgrade content from the Ghosts season pass, which runs $50 and includes four DLC packs. Season pass owners will be able to transfer that content from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, or from PS3 to PS4.
Call of Duty: Ghosts features female soldiers in multiplayer
Call of Duty: Ghosts will include playable female soldiers in the multiplayer campaign, a video in Activision's multiplayer livestream event revealed. Developer Infinity Ward confirmed the addition with a tweet, "Yep, that was a female soldier #GhostsMP." Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin mentioned the inclusion later on in the event: "And as you saw in the trailer, you can also play as a female soldier." This is the first time female soldiers are a playable option in multiplayer Call of Duty history.
Watch the Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer livestream event here
Activision is pulling back the curtain on multiplayer in Call of Duty: Ghosts today. The event is streaming live through Twitch starting at 10:30am PT/1:30pm ET/6:30pm UK time, and you can follow it right here. Joystiq will be in attendance at the Los Angeles venue, so keep an eye out for our impressions later. Infinity Ward is leading development on all platforms for Call of Duty: Ghosts, save for the Wii U, which is being handled by Black Ops 2 developer Treyarch. Ghosts launches on November 5 for Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U. Xbox One and PS4 launch dates have not been specified yet.
Gamestop offers $50 credit with trade of select 360 games for Xbox One versions
Gamestop will offer $50 trade-in credit to PowerUp Rewards members who buy a new, Xbox 360 version of a game and then trade it back in for the Xbox One version. The promotion is valid for the Xbox versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts, Madden 25, FIFA 14, Battlefield 4 or Assassin's Creed 4. In order to be eligible to receive the trade-in credit, patrons must be PowerUp Rewards members at the time of the initial purchase, which must take place within 30 days of the game's release date. Then, upon trading the game in for the Xbox One version, the customer will be emailed a coupon that grants $50 trade-in credit for the Xbox 360 version, for use when upgrading to the Xbox One version before December 31 of this year. No mention of the PlayStation 4 was made in the press release, so whether a similar offer will be made for PS3/PS4 cross-generation games remains to be seen. Update: Gamestop has informed us that the $50 coupon is delivered in tandem with the purchase of the Xbox 360 version of the game, rather than after the upgrade to the Xbox One version. This article has been altered slightly to reflect that information.
Activision: Call of Duty pre-orders negatively impacted by console transition
The upcoming transition into a new generation of consoles is futzing with pre-order numbers for Call of Duty: Ghosts, according to CEO of Activision Publishing, Eric Hirshberg. During his company's earnings call yesterday, Hirshberg noted that pre-orders for Ghosts are "well below the record-setting pace set by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 last year," and that the impending arrival of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are to blame. "Our quantitative consumer research indicates that hesitation amongst past COD pre-orderers is primarily due to not knowing which platform they will be playing on, which is natural at this time in the console transition," he said. Despite the lower pre-order numbers, Hirshberg noted that "other key engagement metrics," such as the number of people playing per month and per day, the amount of DLC sales and community engagement, are all higher than previous years. He also added that pre-orders are more than double that of the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, which was last time Activision introduced a new Call of Duty sub-brand. Activision isn't the first publisher to cite next-gen consoles for lower pre-order numbers. EA Sports brand president Peter Moore recently made similar statements, reporting "softness" in pre-orders for current-gen sports titles as we get closer to the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One.
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%
Call of Duty: Ghosts built with 'cinema quality' art assets
We had the opportunity to chat with Call of Duty: Ghosts Executive Producer Mark Rubin during E3, but instead of asking how many guns the latest installment has, we decided to focus on tech and art. Rubin explains how the next-gen console architectures being so close to PCs will likely help all developers, from the mega studios, like Infinity Ward, to basement developers like Sally Perkins (you'll hear about her in five years). He also goes on to explain how Infinity Ward has reworked its art flow to benefit all platforms.%Gallery-190819%
Call of Duty: Ghosts exorcises several gameplay videos
Get the behind-closed-doors E3 experience with these gameplay videos for Call of Duty: Ghosts. We say that, because if you go to check out the game at the show, these videos are what you're going to see. And you get to do it without the cacophony of show floor noise and with the luxury of doing it in your pajamas to boot. Lucky! Above is the underwater gameplay of "Into the Deep." If you've got any drowning issues, it's probably best to skip that one. After the break we've got next-gen dog attack technology in "No Man's Land," along with the 28-minute Call of Duty: Ghosts presentation from Sunday night. The only video exclusive to E3 at this time is "Federation Day," which finds a squad of soldiers infiltrating a building by rappelling down it and then attempting to escape as the skyscraper collapses, but that should be available sometime after the mega convention concludes. %Gallery-190819%
Call of Duty: Ghosts trailers come in by land, sea
Activision has deployed a pair of Call of Duty: Ghosts trailers, each highlighting a different mission from Infinity Ward's latest – one a romp through a sullen forest, the other an underwater jaunt. Who knew guns worked underwater?
Call of Duty: Ghosts' new engine still iterative, not built from scratch
When Infinity Ward talks about Call of Duty: Ghosts' new engine, the term "new" carries an implied asterisk, at least according to animation lead Zach Volker. "When we're talking about a new engine, we're talking about upgrading significant systems within in that engine – we're not talking about throwing it all away and saying we're starting from the ground up," Volker told Official PlayStation Magazine UK. Creating a brand-new, from-scratch engine on Infinity Ward's production timeline would require "an army of 200 engineers" according to Volker, so the distinction of "new" is made by how significantly upgraded the latest version of the engine is, as compared to the last. "We say okay, what are the things that are significant," Volker said, "that are encompassing of the engine or its visual quality? Are those being upgraded in a significant way? Alright then, I think that warrants that we've got a new engine on our hands."
Call of Duty: Ghosts has Kinect voice commands on Xbox One
Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg has confirmed that the Xbox One version of Call of Duty: Ghosts will have some form of Kinect voice commands. Speaking to VentureBeat, Hirshberg said, "I made a passing comment that you're going to see voice integration, voice commands via Kinect, which is something that we haven't done in the past with Call of Duty." He added that the improvements made to Kinect for Xbox One "really excite" the publisher. Hirshberg also reassured fans that Kinect support won't be careless. "We've always made sure that we don't just use new technology for novelty's sake, he said. "We always make sure that it makes the gameplay better. In this case, we think it will." He didn't elaborate on what the voice commands might be, but we imagine they will be something along the lines of, "Come here! Who's a good boy? Are you a good boy? Yes, you are. Yes, you are!"
Call of Duty: Ghosts confirmed for PS4
In formality news, developer Infinity Ward took to Twitter to confirm Call of Duty: Ghosts for the PS4, in addition to the PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC. In related news, the death of announcements featuring the phrase "next-generation platforms" is blissfully upon us. At the Xbox One event, Activision revealed it's continuing its exclusivity agreement with Microsoft on Call of Duty DLC. So, the one missing link regards Ghosts remains the Wii U, which Activision is staying quiet about.
Comparing next-gen Call of Duty dogs in Ghosts to MW3 dogs
With the next generation of the Call of Duty engine, Activision studios will be able to produce curved objects with realism never before seen in the series. In layman's terms, that means the dogs will look really good - just look at Ghost Dog compared to MW3 Dog. Woof!
Call of Duty: Ghosts deploys first dev diary, screens
Infinity Ward is back in the driver's seat of Call of Duty with Call of Duty: Ghosts. In this behind-the-scenes video diary, key talent opine on what that means for them.
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.
Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC will launch first on Xbox One
Despite its multiplatform status, Call of Duty is almost synonymous with Xbox. It's no surprise then, that Microsoft's new platform, the Xbox One, will be the first next-gen system to digest Call of Duty: Ghosts' DLC. This isn't unprecedented, of course -- the Xbox 360 also boasted a first-out-the-door policy with the series' DLC. Still, a big score for Microsoft, one significant enough to serve as the closing announcement of its Xbox One launch event. Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg went on to reveal the game's first official trailer, assuring fans that Ghosts would fun at a steady 60fps. "It will be the best Call of Duty game we've ever made," he promised, showing slides comparing the new game's Xbox One visuals against previous games in the series. Hungry for more? Patience, friend. E3 is still a few weeks away. %Gallery-188994%
