Activision said that it will be planning to release “premium paid content” related to the Call of Duty series in 2023 following reports claiming no new Call of Duty game will release next year.
Bloomberg reported that mainline Call of Duty games are taking a year off in February 2023. If true, this will mark the first time in 18 years that Activision has ever skipped an annual release. Despite that, it appears that Activision still plans to release some premium Call of Duty content in 2023.”Across the Call of Duty ecosystem, the teams are well positioned to support these launches with substantial live operations while also continuing development of new premium content planned for 2023 and beyond,” Activision said in a statement in its Q2 2022 earnings report.
While it’s possible that the reports are wrong, Bloomberg writer Jason Schreier tweeted he expects the new premium content will be added to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in 2023. That game is scheduled to release on October 28, while Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 is slated for this fall. The mostly scenario is that this “premium content” for Call of Duty is paid DLC, which was present in most games throughout the franchise but has been notably absent for some time.
Currently, the main form of DLC in Call of Duty games comes in the form of store bundles and battle passes. Battle passes differ from traditional DLCs in that they’re offered to the player with additional content within the game instead of as a separate purchase after the game’s release. The last Call of Duty game to have some semblance 0f a traditional DLC structure was Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, but it’s possible that will change next year.
Activision reported that its second-quarter revenue and operating income dipped year-over-year due to low engagement with Call of Duty, but rose again in the first quarter. Engagement with the franchise is expected to rise even more with the release of Modern Warfare II and the Warzone 2.0 expansion later this year.
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.