Pet Battles: Challenge other players’ companion pets with your own collection in a new tactical mini-game, and find out who's king or queen of the pint-sized battlefield.
Launched in November 2004, World of Warcraft is the world’s most popular MMORPG.
Infinity Ward has revealed that the dedicated servers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be unranked, so PC players wanting to level up are going to have to choose between experience points and a superior playing experience.
Writing on the Call of Duty community site, Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling answered a number of questions about the PC version of the game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 comes out for PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 on November 8th.
All apologies to Marvin Gaye, but war is what's going on in video games right now. And perhaps the biggest war game showdown to date kicks off this week with Electronic Arts' release of first-person combat game Battlefield 3, available Tuesday.
EA, the No. 2 publisher in the U.S., has Activision's multibillion-dollar Call of Duty franchise in its sights. Deploying Battlefield 3 two weeks before the Nov. 8 arrival of the next Call of Duty installment, Modern Warfare 3, is part of EA's extensive campaign to gain inroads into the $5 billion first-person shooter game market.
At stake is leadership in one of the hottest genres for the $60 billion global video game industry. First-person shooters currently account for about 16% of all console video game sales, and that's expected to increase, says Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian. Action games such as the Batman and Uncharted titles make up 22%, followed by 16% for sports games such as Madden NFL and NBA 2K
More than two years ago, EA began putting into place a strategy to loosen Call of Duty's grip on gamers. Medal sold 5 million copies but amounted to a mere flesh wound, as Activision's 2010 release Call of Duty: Black Ops rolled on to set a sales record of 25 million cop.
Battlefield 3 appears to have more firepower. An on-the-rise development studio, DICE (Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment), has gradually built a following with its Battlefield series of games.
Armed with its new Frostbite 2 technology to create Battlefield 3's cinematically fluid graphics, buzz has been building about the game. EA says pre-orders for Battlefield 3 are seven times that of previous Battlefield games and approach 3 million.
Battlefield's assault on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 "is certainly more aggressive than we have seen in the past," says Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) analyst Jesse Divnich. Even though Activision and EA are the top two U.S. game publishers, analysts don't think Battlefield 3 can contend with the next Call of Duty game.
The last two Call of Duty games — 2010's Black Ops and 2009's Modern Warfare 2— have taken in $1.5 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively, at retail. "Battlefield is a very strong video game franchise but not an entertainment juggernaut like Call of Duty," Sebastian says.
He expects Battlefield 3 to sell well, especially the PC version, but doesn't expect it to be a "must-have game for the holidays. …Call of Duty is a must-have game now."
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter says EA has succeeded to a point by trying to "provoke Call of Duty players to check (Battlefield 3) out. … A win for EA, he says, would be to sell about half of what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 does. "What EA doesn't want is Call of Duty to outsell them 4-to-1."
In 1999, EA published the first Medal of Honor game for the original PlayStation. Originated by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the World War II-based franchise has gone on to sell more than 30 million copies.
Among those who helped develop 2002's Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was a core group that left to found Infinity Ward, the studio that eventually created the Call of Duty franchise and the subsequent Modern Warfare games that dethroned Medal of Honor.
What EA and DICE are trying to accomplish, "is essentially what Call of Duty did to Medal of Honor, but with much higher stakes," Pachter says. Interest in shooter games is high enough, and "the market is big enough for both of them to exist and succeed," Divnich says. With the onslaught of advertising, new players may be recruited to one or both games.
More than 4,000 of its stores plan midnight launch events for both games. "They each have a large, loyal fan base, so the excitement and trash-talking is buzzing throughout the gaming world. Anticipation has been building for Battlefield 3 since an impressive gameplay video was shown at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March. The game's single-player story, like that of the Modern Warfare games, is based in the near future.
Additionally, the game has multiplayer modes that can be played by up to 64 players simultaneously on PCs (up to 24 on PS3 and Xbox 360). Interest in the game is peaking, says DICE marketing Vice President Lincoln Hershberger. Battlefield 3 was named the top action game at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo. Fans on video game social-networking site Raptr.com voted 3-to-1 for Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3 as the game they are most looking forward to.
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