First the French website Gameblog.fr was quick enough to screenshot a listing for Black Ops 2 on Amazon.fr before it was taken down. The second bread crumb was an employee of Nerve Software listing Black Ops 2 on his public Linkedin, which was also quickly removed but not before Joystiq reported on it.

Shortly after posting the original story on the Amazon listing, Gameblog.fr posted a follow-up to say Activision has now blacklisted them after they refused to pull the original article, which means they will no longer get any Activision games to review or be able to attend their press events. Kotaku interviewed Grégory Szriftgiser (the editor of Gameblog.fr) to provide his version of the events.

In response to Gameblog.fr, Joystiq has a quote from Activision stating they do not blacklist journalists and they believe it was a misunderstanding which can be resolved.

If the game ends up being as entertaining as the journalist deathmatch surrounding this leak, then it might actually think about buying a Call of Duty game for the first time since Black Ops.

Activision along with Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have just released a trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – a game when judged by the trailer will surely give Battlefield 3 a run for its money.

“Call of Duty doesn’t have cut scenes, every second of that was taken from playable moments in the game. #MW3″ – Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward

Don’t want to view the trailer on YouTube? You can grab the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Trailer from the 3FL Mirror.

Modern Warfare 3 will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 8th, 2011.

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Activision has just announced that the latest in downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops will be available on PC June 2nd – a month after its Xbox 360 exclusivity.

Escalation will bring 5 additional multiplayer maps to Call of Duty: Black Ops – four of which will be your standard maps, whilst the fifth map will be an all new zombie map which sees Robert Englund, George Romero, and Sarah Michelle Gellar make an appearance.

Activision has said that it will be making an announcement in regards to the PlayStation 3 version of this downloadable content “soon”.

More information on Escalation can be found over on the Steam Store – where they are currently taking 10% off when you pre-order.

Source: Steam Store

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Activision Blizzard released their First Quarter 2011 Financial Results today, announcing that it had made $1.4 billion in revenue, an increase of $100 million from the year before that. The net income for Activision Blizzard also saw an increase going from $381 million in Q1 2010 to $503 million in Q1 2011.

During the first quarter of 2011 Activision Blizzard held three of the top-10 PC titles, with Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, and Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Activision Blizzard also mentions that Call of Duty: Black Ops had a increase of more than 33% unique gamers playing online within the first five months than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and since the release of the First Strike DLC back in February 1 the average time a player spends online playing per day has risen to an average 58 minutes – more than the 55 minutes an average user spends on Facebook per day.

Source: Activision Blizzard

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Back in February, Xbox360 owners were treated to the Call of Duty: Black Ops DLC Pack “First Strike”.

The DLC Pack contained 4 new multiplayer maps “Berlin Wall”, “Stadium”, “Discovery”, and “Kowloon”, the pack also added a new zombie survival level titled “Ascension”.

PC owners can now purchase the DLC Pack from the Steam Store for $14.99 USD.

Source: Steam

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In a move that was going to no doubt incense Activision, after their departure from IW, West and Zampella started their own new games development house aptly called Respawn Entertainment.  Purportedly a large number of staff from IW who worked on the Modern Warfare 2 title coming across to their new venture with them signing an exclusive deal with EA to publish any game titles that they produce.

No doubt this will take some time to be sorted out in the courts.  In the meantime, until Activision rebuilds Infinity Ward then Treyarch remains as the only other to-date developer of games in the Call of Duty franchise.

Via:  Gamasutra

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Due out the beginning of next month is Call of Duty: Black Ops’ first DLC Map Pack titled First Strike. The pack contains four new multiplayer maps and a zombie map for 1200 MS Points ($20 AUD).

“We’re committed to supporting Call of Duty: Black Ops fans with continuous updates to the game and exciting new content that will keep our community engaged” – Mark Lamia, Treyarch Studios

The four standard maps that ship with the DLC will focus on adding a unique element to each map, with Zip-Lines, Collapsing Bridges and Auto-Turrets all featuring in the new maps.

First Strike will be available on the 1st of February for Xbox 360 users, whilst PlayStation 3 and PC users will have to wait just that little bit longer.

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Last week Activision announced that the Treyarch produced hit shooter “Call of Duty: Black Ops” had hit the $1 Billion dollar revenue milestone in less than 2 months, totaling more than 600 million hours played since its November 9 release.

In the first 24 hours of release it had sold 5.6 million copies earning around $360 million in sales, and within its first week it had reached $650 million – $100 million more than Modern Warfare 2′s profits a year ago.

According to Activision the only other producer to break this milestone so quickly in all other forms of entertainment was James Cameron’s film Avatar.

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“I think dedicated servers are excellent. I don’t see any reason not to see them unless … well, I just don’t see any reason not to…”

“We do work very hard to reconcile the desire to manipulate and modify those dedicated servers with offering them the persistent experience and benefits that the console system provides … so people can run dedicated servers and also participate in the communal experience the console players get to have, given they’re all on first-party servers.”

So PC gamers rejoice, as long as Treyarch don’t bugger up the game, then it sounds like Black Ops could be a new worthy multiplayer game to get stuck into.  The game is due out in November, and will have stiff competition from the new modern day Medal of Honor game being released in October, with no word on whether the Battlefield series will see another outing later in the year as well (BF3 maybe?).

Via:  Joystiq

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Another interesting addition to the game for multiplayer, and something that is probably more console orientated, is the inclusion of co-op gameplay through the single-player campaign.  The co-op will allow 2-4 players to play together to complete the missions, but there aren’t any details on how the difficulty and/or AI will scale with more players as yet.

The game which is being set in the Vietnam war era will have you playing through missions in Vietnam, Cuba and Russia.  So expect to see jungle, tropical environments and snow featuring no doubt.

Via:  Kotaku

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