Ugh…the new “season” of Modern Warfare 3 starts January 24th (for 360 owners at least). Maybe Infinity Ward can spend the offseason coming up with some marketing angles that aren’t ridiculously stupid and unrelated to the game in every way. Or better yet, maybe they can make a better game with simple and intuitive online leagues so that it actually makes sense to have a “season.”

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Maybe it doesn’t want to wantonly destroy everything that moves for the simple purpose of achieving a higher kill/death ratio and unlocking better stuff to kill with. Oh, who am I kidding? This is Modern Warfare 3, where you have perks, your guns have perks, and pretty soon the bullets will too! Remember the olden days when a player could jump into a deathmatch and not feel like he’d entered the introductory sewer levels of an RPG? Actually…if they start adding rodents of unusual size to Call of Duty, I might have to get back into the franchise.

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What you see above is a trailer for Modern Warfare 3, the game that Sledgehammer helped to develop after the highly publicized mass exodus of Infinity Ward employees left that studio reeling in the midst of development. And for what it’s worth, the branching Point Streak concept sounds like a pretty cool development that will reward varying play styles, though the Specialist sounds a bit overpowered to me. But how have Sledgehammer’s redirected efforts affected the Third-Person Call of Duty Action-Adventure that they came to Activision to work on?

Well, according to a recent interview with studio head Glen Schofield, the studio will “probably cancel it.” Schofield says that “[Activision] gave us the choice of: Do you want to work on Modern Warfare 3 or do you want to continue working on this? And we really liked that. We liked what we were doing. It’s third person, probably set at a time that might have ‘niched’ it too much. I bet that if we had kept going, within a month or two, I probably would have switched the time period but kept the gameplay. It had some really cool stuff.”

I’m not entirely sure why they can’t just go back to it now and change the time period, or what time period they possibly could have been working with that would have been too “niche” with the Call of Duty name behind it, but it sounds like the studio that created Dead Space is moving on. Schofield goes on to say that the studio, now over 100 strong, will most likely work on its next project alone, as opposed to collaboratively with other Activision teams (which is becoming more and more common for that company). He also says that it’s up in the air whether that next project will be set in the CoD universe, though he does flatly state that “I plan to continue working on Call of Duty.” We can only hope that the studio’s creative talents are put to use on a game as imaginative as Dead Space.

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Doin’ its thang.

Next-gen Call of Duty in the works at Treyarch?

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If too many years of annual releases haven’t left you searching for a magic pill to reinvigorate your virtual bloodlust, then you might perk up at the thought of all the hot action above taking place between 32 players. According to sfx-360, the pussy’s out of the bag on Modern Warfare 3‘s biggest secret.

The site reports on a YouTube video (which has since been taken down) that was allegedly posted by someone who snuck into the upcoming Call of Duty XP event in L.A. This agent of espionage is said to have “gained access to the Xbox 360 systems they’re [Activision] using for the tournament.”

As you can see in the image above, the game seems to support up to 32 players on some maps and/or modes now. You can also see the game-type “Bomb,” a new entry to the series. Additionally, the video lists the game’s 13 competitive maps: Carbon, Coast, Dome, Exchange, Hardhat, Interchange, Lambeth, Meteora, Mogadishu, Paris, Plaza, Radar and Seatown.

Of course, we’ll have to wait until the actual Call of Duty XP event this weekend to find out for sure. But the screens from the video certainly look legit. If Modern Warfare 3 happens to be your particular fancy, then that should certainly be enough to get the ole blood pumping.

However, if you’re the type who just can’t lock yourself down to one familiar, predictable game, then you’ll be disappointed to know that Sledgehammer’s long-rumored Call of Duty Action-Adventure was put to rest a little prematurely. According to Sledgehammer’s Michael Condrey, they had put in about six months of work and even had a prototype to show for it before opting to go assist Infinity Ward with Modern Warfare 3 (after the great mass exodus of 2010). If you’re curious as to what sort of game they were working on, Condrey gives a hint when he says, “There are a lot of fans out there who enjoy games like Uncharted, so you can imagine that genre meeting a world-class franchise.”

Personally, if that was the direction they were taking, then it’s no hair off my back. I don’t really want to play a military-themed Uncharted. And how do those climbing mechanics make any sense for soldiers? And wait a minute…did he just imply that Uncharted isn’t a world-class franchise? This guy needs to stop taking those bloodlust pills and think with his head!

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Okay, you might be a little confused by that headline. To be fair, the video above has nothing to do with it; that’s just a little sample of Modern Warfare 3‘s “Survival” mode. But onto the good stuff!

As you may know, former Arrested Development star Will Arnett (Gob Bluth) is a huge CoD fan. Apparently, his love for the series (and I’m assuming money has something to do with it too) has led him and former co-star Jason Bateman (Michael Bluth) into a deal with Activision to “create original video programming” that will be exclusive to the Call of Duty: Elite service. That’s the sort of thing that could make a person actually care about the premium service.

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Pretty much what you’d expect–nothing more, nothing less. If you aren’t burnt out on the series’ standard gameplay by now and you still care what happens to the characters, then I’m sure Modern Warfare 3 will offer some of the most exciting set pieces in the business along the way. If you’re looking for something a little more fresh, then you might want to buy $60 worth of fruit while you wait for the FPS to pursue some new avenues. You might want to spread that $60 out over a few years, though.

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But before we get to that I thought I’d share this trailer for Black Ops‘ first DLC map-pack. Looks like it could be fun, although “Berlin Wall” is kidding itself if it thinks it can compete with the Sniping perfect that was “Bull’s eye Bridge” on Medal of Honor: Frontline. But I digress…

According to the Lost Angeles Times (which doesn’t seem to know when either Modern Warfare game came out), the mass exodus of Infinity Ward employees early last year has had more of an effect than Activision would have us believe. The paper reports that in order to get the still unannounced Modern Warfare 3 out in time for the traditional November launch window, Acitivision has pulled Sledgehammer games off of its Action-Adventure CoD spin-off and put it to work with the depleted Infinity Ward. The two studios are said to be sharing development of the campaign while Raven Software (which has handled CoD map-packs in the past) works on the multiplayer portion of the game.

My initial reaction is that having so many studios working on one game is bound to result in a fractured, schizophrenic experience. Perhaps a division in single and multiplayer isn’t so bad, but I just don’t see how a cohesive campaign will emerge with two different developers sharing duties equally. I don’t know, maybe Activision has decided to grow some balls and this is a daring experiment meant to reflect the flaws of the divided leadership structure in Iraq. Either that or Bobby Kotick knows that the series PRINTS MONEY NO MATTER WHAT! It’s a toss-up.

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Little more than a month after the release of the “Stimulus Package,” which has sold over 2.5 million units so far, Activision and Infinity Ward (or what’s left of them) are prepping the release of another map pack, titled “Resurgence Pack.” The downloadable content will go for the same $15 as the first map pack, and will feature five maps, two of them Modern Warfare 1 remakes, just like the “Stimulus Package.” The new maps (pictures in link) are Carnival, Trailer Park, and Fuel. The remakes are of Strike and Vacant.

More interesting news in the Call of Duty arena involves Raven software (Wolfenstein, Singularity) allegedly being pulled off of future James Bond and X-Men games by Activision in order to support the Call of Duty franchise. Remember last time Activision took good developers off of their established work in favor of the golden calf (Neversoft to Guitar Hero)? Yeah, why not just turn every Activision game into a CoD installment now? That’d make sense, right?

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One of the biggest stories within the industry over the past couple months took an interesting turn on Monday, as Jason West and Vince Zampella, the former heads of Infinity Ward who were fired by publisher Activision for alleged breach of contract, have formed a new studio by the name of Respawn Entertainment. West and Zampella went out of their way to ensure that all Intellectual Properties created at Respawn will be wholly owned by the studio, but that hasn’t stopped EA from supporting the respected developers through the EA Partners program. EA is already funding Respawn as it searches for offices and builds its roster, and whenever the studio’s first game comes out, it will be published by Acitivision’s biggest rival.

While West and Zampella have admitted that they have no idea what their next title will be, they promise that it will be big and that it won’t be “exploited.” It has also been confirmed that Respawn will have no involvement with EA’s Battlefield or Medal of Honor franchises–the founders of Infinity Ward will be generating new IP.

Based on the mounting number of resignations at Infinity Ward, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Respawn populated by several familiar faces. While West and Zampella haven’t officially hired anybody yet, the timing of lead designer Todd Alderman, lead software engineer Francesco Gigliotti, veteran programmer Jon Shiring, and Modern Warfare 2 lead designer Mackey McCandlish’s departures is probably more than coincidence.

There’s still plenty of speculation over what will happen with the rights to the Modern Warfare license, what with the suits and counter-suits, but frankly, I’m more interested in seeing the team at Respawn work on something new.

I think EA Games president Frank Gibeau sums the whole situation up nicely with this analogy: “I liken this to when the [Boston] Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the [New York] Yankees for a ham sandwich and a few thousand dollars. That worked out pretty well for him.”

West, Zampella, Gibeau talk Respawn-ing [GameSpot]

Ex-Modern Warfare Creators Haven’t Hatched New Game Idea Yet, Won’t Make Battlefield [Kotaku]

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