Tech Olive

Last month, Activision fired long-time Infinity Ward veterans of the CoD series Vince Zampella (CEO of Infinity Ward) and Ethan West (COO of Infinity Ward). The pair just recently announced the opening of their new studio, Respawn Entertainment, which will be backed by Electronic Arts, a fierce rival of Activision.

Now, it seems Activision is feeling the sting of this move as programmer Jon Shiring, senior animator Bruce Ferriz and MW2 lead designer Mackey McCandlish have announced their resignation and Todd Alderman and Francesco Gigliotti announced earlier this month that they had left the studio.

It’s hard to see a developer like Infinity Ward fall apart and it makes you wonder about the future of the Call of Duty series. Perhaps Treyarch will take a much larger role in the future.

via [IGN]

Last night’s new episode of Family Guy brought in an awesome sight. Peter Griffin buys an Xbox 360 for his kids as an apology for saying that he hated being around them. He ends up hogging the controller and the rest is history. While we would’ve preferred him playing MW2 on the PC, it still doesn’t hurt to see a great game on a great TV show. Robert Bowling (Infinity Ward’s community strategist) also makes a cameo appearance in the game as his infamous gamer tag FourZeroTwo. Watch the clip after the break.

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Robert Bowling confirmed today that MW2‘s Stimulus Package DLC is coming to PC and it will release worldwide on May 4th. Unfortunately, there are still no details as to whether the DLC will cost anything for PC gamers or not. Though, I think it’s safe to assume that we’ll get it free of charge.

“The Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package DLC will hit PS3 in North America on May 4th, everywhere else May 5th. PC gets it worldwide on May 4th” -Robert Bowling via Twitter

It seems Infinity Ward is feeling the squeeze of Bad Company 2‘s iron grip on Steam’s top-10 list, because this weekend MW2 is having its first free weekend event. Starting this Thursday, April 8th, gamers will only be granted access to the multiplayer side of the game (unless they purchase the full game, of course) for the duration of the weekend. So, for anyone wanting to try MW2, here’s the best chance you’ll get. And to any gamers that already have the game, I have two words: Fresh. Meat.

[Press Release]

Through Twitter, Robert Bowling has announced some preview video footage of Modern Warfare 2‘s upcoming Stimulus Package maps. The upcoming DLC is loaded with five new maps; Bailout, Storm, Salvage, Crash, and Overgrown (or, rather, three new maps and two stolen from CoD4). While the pack is set for a March 30th release on Xbox Live, there are no details yet regarding PC release date. Follow the break to see the video.

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Electronic Arts has announced that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has already sold over 2.3 million units since its release on March 2nd (March 4th in Europe). It’s no secret that Bad Company 2 has been a critical success in the gaming world. Even despite the early multiplayer issues, the game has managed to push out some amazing numbers as far as multiplayer stats.

81B points have been earned in online multiplayer sessions

43M weapons and gadgets have been unlocked in online multiplayer

Over 6M video views on YouTube

2.9M hours have been spent playing online in the last 24 hours alone

230K peak-concurrent-users (PCUs)

Over 44k Twitter fans (most out of any EA title)

Could Bad Company 2 actually beat Modern Warfare 2‘s impressive numbers? BC2‘s entire marketing goal since the beginning was to expose and exploit MW2‘s flaws and short-comings while simultaneously trying to “one-up” MW2‘s features and options.

via [Shack News]

In a press release that leaves us a bit confused, Activision announced some details that we already knew; Treyarch’s next CoD game is coming this holiday season and Modern Warfare 2‘s DLC is still coming, but they also announced something very vague about the future of the series:

The company is also for the first time announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre.

From the sounds of that, I see some kind of third-person platform in the future of the CoD series. What do you guys think?

[Press Release]