Treyarch’s fist ever Call of Duty game for new generation devices has been confirmed to be Call of Duty: Black Ops III, continuing the most successful Call of Duty sub-series forward, and bringing it into the current generation. The game was confirmed with a short announcement teaser video today, which you can check out above.

It also appears that this game will take place in the far future- Black Ops was in the Cold War era, Black Ops II was in the near future. Black Ops III will take place in a ‘twisted version’ of the future, which means Exo Suits will also be returning.

We know all this because while Activision themselves said little, saving most of it for the official April 26th reveal of the game, an enterprising Twitter user who goes by the name of @ThaTiemsz has managed to dredge up the following official description of the game from the Call of Duty website:

“Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is the first title for next-gen hardware in the critically acclaimed Black Ops series. Developed by Treyarch, the award-winning creator of the two most played games in Call of Duty history. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 deploys players into a dark, twisted future where a new breed of Black Ops soldiers emerges and the lines are blurred between our own humanity and the technology we created to stay ahead, in a world where cutting-edge military robotics define warfare. With three unique game modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies, it providing fans with the deepest and most ambitious Call of Duty ever.”

So, yes, that sounds pretty hype worthy. Plus, Treyarch is making it, and Treyarch Call of Duty games are always the very best. So personally, I can’t wait to see what this game is all about.

One of the biggest surprises and most popular modes in Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War was the Zombies mode that unlocked once you beat the main campaign. Even though it made no narrative and thematic sense, and the playstyle it encouraged was a complete opposite of the playstyle encouraged by the rest of the game, it became an instant, raging success, and today, stands as the most beloved mode in the series.

But how did this happen? Well, it almost didn’t.

With Treyarch scrambling and racing to complete the game on time, for the holiday 2008 release (the year before, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had been one of the largest hits in gaming history), a small team within the studio got creatively restless, and decided to just make a small zombies minigame. This work was unauthorized and off-brand- and when the studio head was called in to have work on it canceled, and direct these people to work as per schedule (especially with the game already in danger of missing its ship date), he… didn’t. In fact, he enjoyed it so much, they went ahead and finished the mode, and put it into World at War as a hidden, unadvertised bonus for finishing the game.

With the advent of YouTube and social media, the mode took off, so much that its success took Treyarch by surprise, as they were sent scrambling again to support it with more content post launch (the original mode was rather barebones). By the time Treyarch’s next Call of Duty game, Black Ops, was due, Zombies had become an expectation, and when Treyarch went ahead and included a full fledged zombies mode in the title, it officially became solidified as a mainstay in Treyarch developed Call of Duty games.

Which means we should all be really excited for the Zombies mode we will be getting with this year’s Call of Duty, which is being developed by Treyarch.

Sledgehammer Games, the studio that revived flagging interest in Call of Duty with its excellent debut effort, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, recently held an informal and friendly interview in which he decided to field questions from fans.

One of the most popular queries that he was repeatedly pushed to answer was whether Sledgehammer was working on any sort of Call of Duty remaster- maybe bringing the Modern Warfare or Black Ops Call of Duty games to the PS4 and Xbox One? However, Sledgehammer’s studio head Michael Condrey confirmed that there was no such project in the works.

“There are tons of games that I’ve played in my career that I would love to play again, remastered and next-generation experience right, from God of War to Ratchet & Clank, so I get the appeal and I, you know, my heart is closest to Call of Duty and I love going back and playing CoD 4 and Modern [Warfare] 2, and so I can tell you we’re not working on any remastered edition at Sledgehammer,” he said, before diplomatically adding, “I think there’s opportunity for Call of Duty, but that said I don’t know if anybody is working on it, we’re not working on it.”

So that closes the door on Sledgehammer working on a remaster, but it does leave the possibility open for another studio working on one.

And what about future Call of Duty games? Well, Condrey had some very interesting thoughts to share about those as well:

“We’re coming out of Advanced Warfare very proud of what that game is and what it means to fans, but we’re also listening closely to what fans want and ideas about how to continue that going forward, so yeah, everything is on the table,” he said. “The team is focused on the DLC, but we’ve talked about new ways to play, whether that’s branching story-lines or third [person] mode or crazy changes to the multiplayer, we have the luxury of already being in pre-production of our next game so all ideas are good ideas at this point.”

Branching story lines is nothing new for the Call of Duty games, of course- Treyarch already attempted this with the fan favorite Call of Duty: Black Ops II back in 2012. That said, Condrey added one more intriguing tease about future Call of Duty games:

“After speaking with military advisors, strong female characters, strong female military presences are gonna be in the future, and we’re seeing it today, so absolutely, you would expect to see that one day in Call of Duty,” he said.

Personally, that would be freaking awesome, and it might work towards expanding the already considerable audience base of the Call of Duty series.

Hey, does anyone here actually remember the plot of Call of Duty: Black Ops II? Admittedly Treyarch tried to break the mold with that game’s campaign, but it was still some pretty standard fare, and all said and done, just an over the top, summer blockbuster kind of story that only served as a glorified tutorial to the real meat of the game- the multiplayer.

However, one man seems to remember the plot, and he does not seem to be happy with it. That man is former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, who was featured in the game’s story. Apparently in a manner that he did not approve of, because he went ahead and sued Activision over it.

Today, Activision had some choice words to say about his lawsuit, which they think is frivolous.

“Manuel Noriega had no more than an inconsequential appearance in Call of Duty and isn’t entitled to anything for his role as a brutal dictator,” Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor who is heading Activision’s legal team, said in a statement. “If successful, this case would obliterate the entire genre of historical fiction.”

Giullani is correct, and Noriega does not have much of a leg to stand on anyway. Call of Duty: Black Ops II would technically fall under transformative work, which is a form of protected free speech, meaning that Noriega’s lawsuit is likely to be thrown out of the court.

You can read the full response by Activision’s legal team to the lawsuit here.

2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II was actually a fairly good game, but it did see Treyarch’s Dave Anthony, who directed the game, leave to pursue what he called some passion projects. And while speculation has been rife as to what these projects might be– movies? Games? TV?- it turns out he was tapped in by the Atlantic Council as a consultant called upon to predict global threats. Seriously.

“Dave excels in imagining future security scenarios that are different from today’s challenges,” Atlantic Council vice president Barry Pavel said in an emailed statement. “The council will harness Dave’s proven world-class talents for imagining new types of threats to strengthen our work on emerging defense challenges, disruptive technologies, and security and defense strategy.”

“When you look at the threat from groups like ISIS, the next threat to America is not that we’re going to get invaded by hundreds of thousands of troops on the mainland,” he told the publication. “It’s that you might have a hundred ISIS troops in your country who simultaneously attack soft targets.”

Well… I guess in a very Michael Bay-ish way, Call of Duty has sort of predicted global threats, I guess? I really don’t know. But it’s still pretty cool, if a little bemusing. If you are more interested in this, make sure to check out the original piece by Foreign Policy here, which was first noticed and picked up on by the fine folks over at Polygon.

Microsoft will finally be launching a 500 GB variant of their Xbox 360 console next month (only about a year after the launch of its successor!); retailing for $250, Microsoft is making sure that this will be the SKU that people pick up, as it will come with two free Call of Duty games- Treyarch’s 2012 sequel, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Infinity Ward’s disappointing entry from last year that kicked off the new gen for Call of Duty somewhat inauspiciously, Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The console and controller in this bundle will also be blue, which is a little odd, but you know what, for that kind of value at that kind of price, I’ll take it!

Also available at some time in the future will be a 500GB hard drive sold separately for the Xbox 360. It is probably not unreasonable to expect that it will go on sale at roughly around the same time as this console does, but we don’t have any official confirmation yet.

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Call of Duty may have debuted on the PC a decade ago, but in the years since, the series has enjoyed what can only be termed as an acrimonious relationship with PC gaming and PC gamers. And even though the games continue to do well on the PC, selling in the millions, it’s clear that their popularity on the platform seems to be in a sharp decline.

To wit: Call of Duty: Ghosts’s multiplayer on PC seems to officially be a bust. PC Gamers N noticed that the official Steam tracker had 4,574 people playing Call of Duty: Ghossts worldwide today (shockingly low numbers for any respectable multiplayer shooter, let alone Call of Duty); in contrast, 2012’s Black Ops II by Treyarch had 9,040 people playing.

Even if these are not peak hours for multiplayer gaming- and they might well not be, considering how generally low both numbers seem to be- they are indicative of a problem, and that problem is that Call of duty does not seem to be the preferred multiplayer game among PC gamers, and the new game definitely seems to be less popular than its predecessor.

Will this year’s upcoming Advance Warfare. which is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, is in the same vein as Treyarch’s Black Ops II, and which promises an overhaul of franchise standards and mechanics, be the game to breathe life back into the series after Ghosts’s subpar performance throughout. We’ll find out soon.

A NeoGAF mod recently put together a comparison between sales in the UK for 2013 versus those of 2012. This comparison has provided some more information on the trends for certain franchises, such as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed.

The important thing to note is that Grand Theft Auto V was the top selling title of 2013, shipping 3,670,234 units. FIFA 14 followed it with 2,656,763 units, which is only a little bit more than FIFA 13’s numbers which were 2,601,877 units. Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Ghosts managed to sell 1,991,994 units which is a big drop from that of Black Ops II, which shipped 2,672,364 units. It did far better than Battlefield 4 though which only sold 838,869 units.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, on the other hand, managed to match up to Assassin’s Creed III. It sold 776,888 units compared to the latter’s 886,198 units. Not an enormous drop and with the good will the fourth game has, sales should be up when ACV eventually hits.

Activision and Microsoft seem to understand its core demographic pretty well, it seems. If you buy Call of Duty: Black Ops II DLC on the Xbox 360, the proceeds from the sales will go to support US military veterans, reports Polygon. This offer will continue through to the next week.

Players will be able to buy Personalization Packs (all seventeen of them) at a 25% discount from their usual price; developer Treyarch and Microsoft will donate all the profits from the sales in this period to US veterans via the Call of Duty Endowment.

The Call of Duty Endowment is a charitable foundation dedicated to supporting organizations that help veterans find employment. At Gamescom 2013, Activision revealed that it has given more than $10 million to the Endowment since founding the nonprofit organization in 2009, which, while peanuts compared to what Call of Duty games make in a single day, is still an impressive number.

“This is a great opportunity for the Call of Duty community to get involved, and we’re delighted to work with Treyarch and our friends at Xbox to donate all profits from this activity toward helping vets find good jobs,” said Dan Goldenberg, executive director of the Call of Duty Endowment, in a press release today.

This should certainly generate some sales for the DLC packs in the US, although it would be interesting to see what effect this has on sales of DLC packs in international territories for the coming week.

In any case, it’s a nice gesture on Activision’s part.

The 4 new maps are Vertigo, Studio, Encore and Magma. However,  the center of the card teases a new zombie map called Mob of the Dead. The images easily described the locations of Vertigo and Studo maps. Vertigo is located on a high rise, while Studio is located in a movie studio. Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell where Magma and Encore exactly take place. The background image of Mob of the Dead map suggests that it’s taking place in the Alcatraz, the former United States penitentiary. One of the community live members @LiamFTWinter managed to get an exact description of Uprising DLC  from the Xbox Live Marketplace upload registry.

The description says the following: “Call of Duty®: Black Ops II Uprising includes four incredibly diverse Multiplayer Maps: Magma, Encore, Vertigo, and Studio: a reimagined adaptation of the fan-favorite Black Ops multiplayer map Firing Range. Uprising also introduces Mob of the Dead, Treyarch’s most terrifying Zombies experience to date.

Top Hollywood talent rounds out a cast of four Prohibition-era gangsters that are forced to fend off hordes of the undead while imprisoned on San Francisco’s notorious Alcatraz Island. While guard towers and new weapons offer tactical advantages, survival offers an unprecedented new challenge for these four lost souls.” Keep your eyes peeled for Call of Duty Black Ops II: Uprising on April 16th 2013.

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