All Articles: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Are you ready to go behind-the-scenes of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Season, specificially the new maps, “Liberation” and “Piazza?” Then you’re in luck, as Infinity Ward has released a video detailing all of the work the team is putting into the first of 20 content drops they have planned for Modern Warfare 3 in 2012.

Most interesting of all is the fact that Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, strongly hinted that the team is planning at least one expansion to the single-player campaign when he summed up the new content that’ll be available for Modern Warfare 3: “Awesome multiplayer, new Spec Ops missions, extensions to the story, new game modes that we can add…”

The last (and so far, only) time a Call of Duty game received a single-player expansion was 2004’s Call of Duty: United Offensive.

You knew they were coming, and now, Activision has announced the details of the first two downloadable maps for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Scheduled to drop January 24 for Xbox 360-owning Call of Duty Elite subscribers, “Liberation” and “Piazza” will bring the war to Central Park and a serene Italian villa. In “Liberation,” players will find “a vast, militarized landscape, ripe for long-range sniper and LMG fire, with mounted turrets on either end that lend power to anyone brave enough to expose themselves in exchange for deadly firepower.” Meanwhile, “Piazza” is considered “the idyllic Italian getaway that is anything but, where tight corners and branching pathways pose great risk at every turn.”

Call of Duty Elite users will also receive a variety of content drops throughout 2012. At least once per month, Activision plans to unleash a new piece of content on the CoD Elite community. In addition to the maps, another piece of content will launch in mid-February with two more scheduled for March. All told, at least 20 pieces of DLC will be released for Modern Warfare 3 between now and September.

All of the CoD Elite content drops will be available first for Xbox 360 owners with PC and PS3 subscribers getting them “at a later time.”

But speaking of March, that’s how long non-Call of Duty Elite subscribers will have to wait to get their hands on these maps, when the first “Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection” will be made available for download.

That’s the sound of Activision selling many more CoD Elite subscriptions. Dismissed!

To your left, you’ll find a screenshot from “Park” (click to enlarge), a Central Park-themed map that’ll be included in the first round of DLC for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. According to Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling, the DLC pack containing “Park” will be available for Xbox 360-owning Call of Duty Elite users on January 24.

But here’s where things get interesting. Activision signed an agreement with Microsoft to release all Call of Duty DLC on the Xbox 360 first. But, the publisher has also promised all Call of Duty Elite subscribers that they will receive DLC before the general public. As those two statements can’t be easily reconciled, somebody (probably PS3-owning Elite subscribers) is going to get screwed.

PC and PS3 gamers had to wait a month after the maps were made available to Xbox 360 owners to play Black Ops DLC. Who knows what a staggered release schedule with five separate groups will look like?

We’ll have to wait until 2012 to find out more, as Activision confirmed that more information on “Park” and the rest of the DLC pack will be released next year.

Activision announced on Monday that their latest blockbuster, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, made $1 billion in the first 16 days of its release, beating out the previous record set by Avatar in 2009, which got to that milestone in 17 days.

The press release was full of random facts, including this one, which gave me pause: “With more than 30 million gamers, the Call of Duty community now exceeds the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid.” For the record, the total population of those five cities is 42 million. You fail math forever, Activision!

The article went on to say that the CoD games are “now amongst that rarefied group of sustained franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the National Football League (NFL) that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release.”

Wow. Comparing Call of Duty to the NFL? That’s pretty intense. I still haven’t picked up my copy of Modern Warfare 3, but maybe Santa will leave it in my stocking.