Grave Gamer News & Views — activision

Destiny Beta Arrives Early 2014, Called a “Massive Undertaking”

It’s starting to hit me. Bungie is back. And what they’re bringing with them is best quantified between “pants tightening” and “mind blowing.” That’s right: it’s pants blowing.

Though, some waiting is required before the world races into Bungie’s MMO-FPS hybrid, Destiny, due out sometime in 2014. But!While supplies hold out, your pre-order at a participating retailer gains you access to Destiny’s beta planned for the Spring. Bungie community honcho, Eric Osborne, labels the beta a “massive undertaking,” and I’m inclined to agree. The beta, which will be available across all platforms the game is on, encompasses way more of Destiny’s open-world than a paltry few disjointed sections.

“The Destiny beta, in many ways, is being treated like a full product launch,” said Osbrone in an interview with GameSpot. “We can’t just carve out three competitive multiplayer maps this time around. We’d only be gathering data on one facet of the overall experience – one that is the least resource intensive and most well understood by our team. Destiny demands more.”

Bungie wants to include rich, sprawling destinations in the beta for you and your friends to explore, introducing players to the core emphasis on discovering unique story elements, treasure, and engaging in “face melting action.” More importantly, Osborne wishes to stress test the game under the harshest conditions imaginable: by slamming Destiny into a wall of human interaction.

We can, and do, perform a lot of small to large-scale testing, but nothing beats a turbulent sea of gamers smashing up against our code, services, and content,“ says Osborne. "No amount of prediction or intuition can account for the delightfully random human element that will ultimately define Destiny.”

Destiny, the first title out of Bungie’s doors since 2010’s Halo: Reach, releases for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One next year, and is the first part of a proposed ten year cycle for the sci-fi franchise.

Check out this absolutely pants blowing trailer for the game called The Moon.

Call of Duty Preorders Weakened By Impending Consoles

Something interesting is happening to the once mighty COD and Activision is putting the blame squarely on Sony, Microsoft, and your fickleness.

More specifically, Acti says the soon-to-be next generation — which encompasses the unreleased PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (if nobody looks Wii U in the eye, it won’t try to join the conversation) — is negatively affecting preorders for their annualized money bath, Call of Duty.

Eric Hirshberg, Acti’s CEO of Publishing, revealed that Call of Duty: Ghosts’ preorder numbers are nowhere near “the record-setting pace" Black Ops II cemented before its November release last year.  Could it…Could it be that the gaming masses have grown tired of purchasing a rehashed, increasingly formulaic product year-over-year?  Are gamers finally at the boiling point where they’re wisely using dollars withheld to send both a message and a plea for inspired, innovative gameplay once mo—

“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."  Oh.  I guess there’s also that.  Thanks for clearing that up, Eric.  Indecisiveness hath wounded the beast it seems.

It’s an interesting dilemna Sony and MS have presented third-party publishers with.  Over this past generation, publishers have taken to relegating one-off’s or shaky IP’s to smaller digital affairs and focused their efforts into building sequel spewing franchises because their business models have morphed into almost totally relying on guaranteed cash-in’s.

Besides a shortlist of annual sports titles, you didn’t really see these yearly blockbusters running towards the PS3 and 360’s launch.  Now, we’re witness to companies like Ubisoft and EA packing up their totem titles like Assassin’s Creed and Battlefield, hoisting them over their shoulders, and making the journey to a brave new, next-gen world.

But missed preorders almost definitely won’t mean missed sales when Ghosts launches (like clockwork) this Holiday.  The third-party, Activision included, has a contigency against the very same install base they fought and bled to root over the course of this generation.  Of the three heavy hitting franchises mentioned in my rambling, all have current-gen counterparts being made available for the unwilling and undecided hesitant to go next-gen.

I think the upward battle ahead pushes the first-party into the frontlines more than the third-party.  Any angle you approach it, it’s not a matter if games will sell — because they will.  It’s a matter of where games will sell.  Why cry over spilt milk, Activision?  (If "crying” in this instance means issuing a sales report and the “spilt milk” refers to low preorders on a multi-billion dollar video game…Listen, I wasn’t formally trained in metaphors.  Lay off me.)

“Now consider that these Internet Tough Guy rants and demands are not unique to CoD, but exist everywhere, in many gaming communities. This is why the world often does not take gaming seriously; this is why gamers are assumed to be immature, whiny assholes. Because the immature, whiny assholes are louder.”

Dan Amrich, Activision Community Manager, lambasting the enraged and, in some cases, threatening verbal assault from certain "passionate” fans, doled out to a Treyarch employee in charge of Black Ops II’s tweaks and balances.

Excerpt from Amrich’s plainly put editorial Stop Threatening Game Developers.

“The Ghosts Are Real” - New Cast, New Engine, Next-Gen Call of Duty

And now for the announcement that surprised no one today: Activision has officially revealed Call of Duty: Ghosts, this year’s entry into the military shooter franchise, releasing November 5th and headed up series creator Infinity Ward.  That much anyone without internet access knew already thanks to some critical leaks.

What we didn’t already know is sure to excite fans, especially those growing tired of the series’ baby step amount of “innovations."  Ghosts is slated for release on both existing consoles as well as Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s soon-to-be-unveiled Next-Box.  Because of this, Infinity Ward is using an entirely new engine for the game, finally retiring the one powering the last seven hundred Call of Duty’s.

Despite Infinity Ward’s involvement, Ghosts isn’t a follow up to Modern Warfare 3.  The game features an all new cast of characters within a brand new setting.  "Everyone was expecting us to make Modern Warfare 4, which would have been the safe thing to do,” said IW executive producer Mark Rubin.  “But we’re not resting on our laurels."  Rubin explains that the transition to newer hardware was the perfect opportunity to reintroduce the world to Call of Duty through a new branding with new ideas.

Just what those new ideas are is up in the air.  The first official trailer for the game is a live action teaser featuring precisely zero gameplay.  But Activision promises way more, including actual gameplay, will be shown off right alongside Microsoft’s Next-Gen reveal event taking place on May 21st.  Till then, here’s a corporate byline to make you feel all fuzzy on the inside:

"Infinity Ward is going all-in to create the next generation of Call of Duty worthy of the world’s greatest fans.”

Call of Duty: Ghosts Confirmed and, Better Yet, Dated

New promotional art circulating stores the likes of GameStop (I’ve never heard of ‘em; must be small time) has outed the latest installment of Activision’s annualized FPS breadwinner.

Once again under developer Infinity Ward’s reigns, Call of Duty: Ghosts, which is more than likely to have an official May 1st reveal, was also dated by the retailer art for November 5th of this year, falling in line with the release dates of the umpteen titles before it.

Not just an exceptionally badass subtitle, Ghosts is rumored to improve on the aging shooter’s formula through the addition of destructible environments ('bout time), increased mobility options such as a new slide n’ shoot maneuver, and tweaks to smaller components like loading segments becoming playable.

The promotional art keenly fails to name which consoles this seeming Modern Warfare offshoot is coming to, but initial reports heavily suggest Activision is taking a multi-generational stance and launching Ghosts on both current and forthcoming systems.  Personally, I’ll be watching closely how Acti looks to handle the shaky bridge between now and the next-gen, especially considering one of their first ventures will be their biggest franchise.  More to come, folks, as this one develops.