Call of Duty HQ

Episode 3 of Retaliation Released

Make sure to check out the newest episode in this series. The 3rd episode is entitled Squall. It continues to look through the scope of a CoD4 sniper on the job. Check it out below:

If you'd like to check out the whole series at machinima.com go HERE.

REMINDER: CoD4 Coming Soon for Mac

Just wanted to remind everyone that the game we've all been enjoying for the past few months is set to come out this month for you Mac users out there. This was announced in January of this year by Aspyr which is the company publishing the game. The price is set to be the same as the PC version; $49.99. As soon as I hear a confirmed date it will be posted on this page.

In the meantime, check out HERE to read the news on the Aspyr site.

Retaliation: Episode 2

For anyone who got to check out the new series Retaliation over at machinima.com you already know how sweet it is! For those of you that haven't had the opportunity make sure you check out Sgt. Padrino's excellent creation. I'd recommend watching the first episode as well as this newest, Episode 2:

To check out Episode one of this series or the trailer go HERE. It's great to see the fun of CoD4 brought to life in the vivid and dynamic way it is done in this series. Love the music in this episode!!

Call of Duty 3 Maintenance

Treyarch, the makers of Call of Duty 3, will be performing some scheduled maintenance on their servers on Tuesday April 22nd between 6:00-8:00am EST or 11:00am-1:00pm GMT if you're across the pond. The rest of you North Americans not in the Eastern Time Zone will have to do the math yourselves.

Looks like this maintenance will go towards improving stability and performance of the servers for you PS2 and PS3 users. For more info. on this check out this link to the Playstation forums HERE.

PS3's Live Fire Weekend!

The CoD4 Variety Map Pack is due to hit the Playstation Network on Thursday, April 24 for all those in North America. Europeans can expect it May 1.

In celebration of this release, Infinity Ward is hosting a Live Fire Weekend event in which Playstation players will be able to frag with the developers, as well as enjoy double-XP much like the Xbox 360 fans did when the DLC was released on their platform.

The double-XP will be available from 12:01 AM PDT on Friday, April 25 to 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday, April 27. Furthermore, the developers will be on that Friday from 5 to 8pm PDT.

Check out fourzerotwo's blog for more information!

Call of Duty 4 IS #1. Period.

So there are lots of statistics out there that suggest Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as being the number one played game on Xbox Live, the best-selling game of 2007, the 3rd best-selling game of March, etc. All of these are great acclamations for sure.

But how about best-selling game of the past 12 months? Well according to stats Next-Gen.biz has compiled from the NPD and publishers alike, CoD4 is the #1 selling game for the past 12 months.

That's right, it beats out Halo 3 and Guitar Hero III, and every other game that has been released over the past year.

Now try to picture that. Out of all the games released over the past TWELVE MONTHS; let's name a few:

Madden NFL '08
Assassin's Creed
Bioshock
Devin May Cry 4
The Orange Box (including TF2 and Portal)

Yep, they're all on the list as well, and each did quite well for themselves. But Call of Duty 4 dwarfed all those sales. How about the rivaling Crysis which certainly has better graphics, but critics are split between which game had a better story and overall value... Well unfortunately, Crysis was not even on this list of 100 best-selling games. We'll just let the numbers speak for themselves.

It's one thing to be the best-selling game of a month or a narrow period of time. But to be named the best-selling game for an entire year's worth of time is a pretty challenging feat, only matched by Goliaths like World of Warcraft and The Sims. But with the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto 4 right around the corner, I wonder if Infinity Ward's title might be stripped. We shall see!

Click Here for the source list of the top-100 best-selling games over the past 12 months.

Job Opportunity at Activision!

We just got wind of a great opportunity opening up at Activision Treyarch. Treyarch is seeking an individual who is well versed in the Call of Duty tool sets to join the team as a "Tools Tester."

In short, your responsibilities would be to identify, track, and report bugs that exist in the various mod tools Treyarch are developing for one of their upcoming titles. Experience with Radiant is required, and the broader your understanding of the previous CoD toolsets the better.

This position would be a full-time paid position in their Santa Monica, CA office. It is a great opportunity to break into the game design industry, and work side-by-side with the developers to better the community's experience!

Click here for the full job description, and instructions on how to apply today!

Downloadable Content Released for Xbox

For all you Xbox gamers out there the day has finally arrived for you to be the first to download and play the new content introduced from Infinity Ward. Yes, that's right it's now available for download off your Xbox. I'm sure there are a few of you that have been playing it all day as it was released this morning which was slightly earlier than expected. A quick reminder that the content contains 3 new maps plus a bonus one as well as a few other "fixes". Also remember that unfortunately this isn't a free download and will cost you 800 MS points.
You can read more about the release from Major Nelson from Xbox Live over at his site: HERE

For all you PS3 players stayed tuned for the release to you later on this month as mentioned in my previous article. PC gamers there is still no word on what IW will be doing for us but as soon as it's available the information will be posted here.

Also be sure to check out this video from Gametrailers.com which includes actual gameplay of the new map Broadcast and a short interview with IW community manager Robert Bowling and what he thinks of the new map. He even gives some tips on playing it and which gametypes he prefers to play on it.

ModernRcon Real-Time Chat Down

Well something has happened that I didn't believe was going to happen for a million years.

A simple website exists which returns your IP and nothing but your IP. If you visit www.WhatIsMyIP.org it is supposed to simply in plain text return your IP address.

Well currently, WhatIsMyIP.org is DOWN. It has been up for years, as you can imagine it doesn't utilize many resources to host, so it is surprising to see the service offline.

Well ModernRcon utilizes this website to detect your IP for connecting to PBUCON. Believe it or not, it is difficult to detect your external IP address on your PC using Java, which is why I went with a web resource. Well clearly this is the problem with taking this route, and as a result all of you are prevented from using the in-game chat monitoring software included with ModernRcon.

So, I will be releasing a patch ASAP which uses a script on CoDHQ.com (which will never be down!) rather than relying on a 3rd party service. So please bear with me, and I appreciate your patience. Please visit the ModernRcon forums for more updates!

Update: WhatIsMyIP.org is back online now, so this problem is resolved. But v0.7 will be sure to reference a script running on CoDHQ.com so this will be avoided in the future.

DLC Dates Released....Sort Of

If you've been following my last few news articles, you know I've been going on about the downloadable content coming for CoD4. Once again, the Infinity Ward community manager fourzerotwo has kept us updated on matter. The approximate release dates are out now and are as follows:

Xbox-- April 3rd or 4th
PS3 -- Approximately 3 weeks (21 days) later -- April 24th or 25th
PC -- No release date set
This release is following the similar way the patch was released for Xbox first and then PS3 afterwards. As mentioned before as well, this will not be free and both console groups will be paying the same price despite the later release date for PS3. UPDATE: THE COST FOR XBOX USERS WILL BE 800 MICROSOFT POINTS (PS3 WILL BE THE SAME). The reason a release date hasn't been set for you PC gamers out there is that Infinity Ward is still trying to figure out the logistics of releasing those maps for us. I'd personally be very surprised if we aren't paying approximately the same price for this new content as our console counterparts though.

Some extra news for you console players though is that aside from the map pack being released, the content will also include a few more fixes that weren't released with the last patch. The big fix which many of you will appreciate is around Clan Tags. You will now be re-allowed to use special characters in your tags but without the associated exploit. For more information on this content check out fourzerotwo's BLOG.