Activision has confirmed that it has a new entrant in the Call of Duty franchise planned for this year. But it may announce the new game in a decidedly different way.
Speaking to investors on an earnings call on Tuesday, August 4, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick suggested the company may ultimately unveil the next Call of Duty game, believed to be known as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, inside its free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone environment.
“To your initial point that you’re talking about why you were waiting for such a long time … it’s Warzone I think that’s caused us to rethink how, when, and even where we reveal our upcoming title,” Kotick said in response to an analyst question on why Activision hasn’t announced its new Call of Duty game yet. “We can’t wait to share it with the community, and we think it’s going to be very different and more engaging than anything that we’ve ever done before.”
Kotick spent considerable time talking about Warzone and its impact on the company during the earnings call. He said the title has attracted more than 75 million players since the game launched in March and has been a “great platform” for promoting Activision initiatives.
“Starting with marketing, it’s definitely had an impact there and how we think about marketing in this new world,” Kotick said.
Activision’s President Rob Kostich also chimed in on Warzone’s importance to both Activision’s broader business and the Call of Duty franchise, saying he expects Warzone to factory heavily in the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War title.
“There will be a very tight integration between the two,” Kostich said of Warzone and Black Ops. “Modern Warfare and Warzone are obviously very tightly connected, and I think that’s really important for the player base.”
Despite all their talk about the next Call of Duty game and how it will be integrated with Warzone, Activision’s executives stopped short of announcing a launch date, official name, or game details. But with all signs pointing to a late-2020 launch on both current- and next-generation hardware, it may not be long before Activision unveils what it has planned for its next installment.
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.