Gamescom 2015: Competitive Call of Duty Will Be Played on PS4 from Now On

If this year's Gamescom has reminded us of anything, it's that "professional" gaming is a thing. Last night's Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 conference was built around the very idea of eSports, while Microsoft's briefing featured a "former Halo coach" commentating on a match. Yeah, the whole thing makes our skin crawl, too – but apparently it's big business.

And it's a probably a big deal that competitive Call of Duty will be played on the PlayStation 4 from now on. Speaking as part of last night's stream, Treyarch's ever enthusiastic David Vonderhaar confirmed as much. "PlayStation is the new home of Call of Duty eSports," he said. It means that "pros" will have to get used to a different pad, but we're sure that that won't be a problem.

Sony's really going hard with Activision's uber-franchise: DLC will launch first on PlayStation platforms, while yesterday's broadcast was absolutely plastered with PS4 branding. Speaking of which, some of the new features coming to competitive Call of Duty include Arena mode, which will see you moving up divisions to the top of the FPS hierarchy, and Bans and Protects, which will add a tactical meta-game to the action as teams can block opponents from using their favourite weapons.

The popular CoDCast functionality will also make a return, allowing broadcasters to provide viewers with more information on ongoing matches. To be honest, even though we live and breathe games on a daily basis, this sort of stuff is way out of our wheelhouse. It's pretty cool that Treyarch's going to such lengths to support its competitive community, though.