With theories flying around based on some dialogue heard at a private stream event with prospective NFL players, fans of the Call of Duty franchise are waiting for official word from Activision on what’s coming next in the series. IGN learned via an Activision financial call that the mysterious next entry will be revealed during the company’s second quarter, which ends on June 30.
What do we know about the upcoming Call of Duty game? It won’t be an online-only affair like Black Ops 4. The most recent Call of Duty dropped the single-player campaign, essentially replacing it with Treyarch’s take on the battle royale genre: Blackout. This new survival PvP mode was bundled with Zombies and classic PvP multiplayer, giving players with the capability to play online a plethora of competitive and cooperative experiences to dig into. Activision confirmed in a previous earnings call that the next Call of Duty will, however, deliver a single-player campaign. Infinity Ward is the studio developing the new game, which should launch sometime in the fourth quarter.
During an event where college athletes gearing up for the NFL draft got a chance to play the new game privately, a couple of clips strongly suggested to some that the next game will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Infinity Ward created Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, while also teaming up with Sledgehammer Games for the third title, so it would make sense that Modern Warfare 4 is the next one up. Former Infinity Ward creative strategist and community manager Robert Bowling also seems to think the Modern Warfare series will be returning soon.
E3 2019 falls right within the window for the reveal, but the team could act sooner. The leaks may push the publisher and developer to do an official reveal sometime in May instead of waiting until the end of June. Whatever Activision and Infinity Ward are cooking up will have some stiff competition this year, with Avalanche and Bethesda’s Rage 2 coming out soon and Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 3 releasing later in the year. Gamers are going to have some solid first-person shooters to add to their libraries.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.