Stop the presses! Kotaku has acquired a picture of a pre-order poster for Call of Duty: Black Ops III that lists the game’s release date as November 6. This would be big news if it weren’t for the fact that nearly every Call of Duty game, stretching all the way back to Call of Duty 3, is released in early November. The only weird thing about the date is that it’s a Friday, but skipping Tuesday as a launch date has become increasingly common in recent years.
But still, we can glean one bit of useful information from this poster. According to the image, everyone who pre-orders the game will receive an invite to a closed beta on the PC, PS4, or Xbox One. Confirmation of those three platforms isn’t surprising, but it does hint at Activision moving on from previous-gen consoles for the Call of Duty franchise. Black Ops III’s source code leak did refer to the game as “the first [Call of Duty] title for next-gen hardware,” so the PS3 and Xbox 360 may not be in the cards at Treyarch. However, this isn’t proof that a previous-gen version isn’t happening, either.
On the other hand, this could be some kind of hoax. That kind of thing isn’t unprecedented. But even if it a fake, the information is still likely to be accurate. Wrap your head around that!
All that said, we’ll learn a lot more about Call of Duty: Black Ops III this Sunday, April 26, when Activision pulls the curtain back on the game’s “World Reveal.”
