Sounds To Us Like The Call Of Duty Franchise Is Over.

Remember Call Of Duty? Yeah it was a big deal for a little while. It’ll continue to be a big deal for a while longer. But it kinda sounds like the franchise is done.

In a whole pile of drama starting yesterday, Activision has fired the Infinity Ward bosses Vince Zampella and Jason West. Activision’s also filed a document citing a human resources investigation “into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward”. Gamasutra argue that the “insubordination” clause might be Activision’s way of getting out of a contract with Infinity Ward that states only they can make games in the Modern Warfare franchise. Big stuff right there. But we haven’t finished yet.

Indeed Activision announced last night that new upstarts Sledgehammer games (formerly of EA’s Visceral team) will work on an “action-adventure” Call Of Duty game in 2011, alongside another Call Of Duty game by an unknown developer.

Basically, Activision are milking Call Of Duty for everything it’s worth and the two guys that were responsible for kick-starting the franchise, well, they’re no longer at Infinity Ward.

The Game Totally Still Needs Fixing Folks.

It never seems to be longer than a few days before we’re posting about yet another Modern Warfare 2 patch. We know the popularity of the game has lead to plenty of exploits but, this is kind of ridiculous. The latest patch should fix the predator missile on care package exploit, plus more rebalancing for the shotguns. Oh and earning negative XP no longer happens.

Anyone still play this game? Dumb question we ’spose.

Yep, More Fixes For Modern Warfare 2 Exploits.

Gah, it feels like every week we’re posting about another Modern Warfare 2 patch that fixes some glitch or other. Take the latest patch, which fixes the following:

• Care Package, Emergency Airdrop, and Sentry Gun marker grenades sprint speed normalized
• Fix for “infinite care package” exploit
• Sentry Guns: Improved placement detection, preventing cases of Sentry Guns inside geometry
• Model 1887: Bling using Akimbo and FMJ combination now has same range and damage as non-Bling Model 1887s
• Improved player collision removing cases of getting into geometry and “elevators”
• Fixes to prevent various XP hacks

The patch went live in Europe yesterday but has since been pulled. Because it basically broke the online. Infinity Ward are working on it and will hopefully be able to get these fixes out to everyone ASAP.

Against All Odds: Uncharted Quality vs. Modern Warfare Quantity.

Someone grab that little dude with the funny suit from Braid because I’m about to take you on a trip through time. Rewind the clocks back to November 2006 when Sony released the Playstation 3 upon the world. It was met with feverish anticipation and was considered the second, err, third coming of the great Playstation home console series. All was good with the world. That is, until it was decided by people who write important things on the Internet that the PS3 had “no good games” on it. Apparently this was because of a unique infrastructure that caused developers to either shy away from creating games for the console at all, or just making shitty ports of XBOX 360 games that didn’t show off what the PS3 was really made of.

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Modern Warfare 2 Fans Will Have To Make Do With What Came In The Box. For Now.

Microsoft announced at E3 that they’d given Activision lots of money secured “exclusive first looks” at the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 DLC, but until today the exact context of that statement had not been revealed. However, Eurogamer are reporting today that Modern Warfare 2 DLC will receive a period of timed-exclusivity on the XBOX 360, for 30 days. So basically, you’ll be able to play all Modern Warfare 2’s DLC on Playstation 3; you’ll just have to wait a few weeks.

Seriously, we wonder how much Microsoft paid just to piss off a contingent of players? This deal just sounds pointless.

Hello David Bowie.

Come on guys. Dance. After nine weeks, Modern Warfare 2 has finally been knocked off the top of the British sales charts which means — we get to say something interesting in this post for once. Like quoting Lady GaGa lyrics.

That’s right folks, of all the games to topple Infinity Ward’s shooter, the Wii’s Just Dance has done the impossible. On red wine.

So what else’s going down on the floor? Well, apart from spinning records, not much, but here’s the thing; Modern Warfare 2 isn’t top anymore. We can’t see straight anymore.

We’re getting hosed tonight.

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You? Again? Really? Aw ok then.

Maybe next time, we’ll drop the clue. But our little game still won’t be much fun, yo. It’s too obvious. At this stage we’re starting to believe that even when something huge, like, say, Final Fantasy XIII or God Of War III launches; Modern Warfare 2 will still be sitting atop the British sales charts. It’ll probably still be there in 2011. By which time we’ll have run out of funny comments to write after informing you the game’s top for 52 (and more) weeks.

Infinity Ward’s cultural phenomenon wasn’t really that hindered by new releases this week, as Bayonetta entered in fifth and Darksiders in eighth.

Full list after the jump.

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