Month: July 2019

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will bring back killstreak rewards in multiplayer, publisher Activision has confirmed, though one of the weapons revealed has caused some controversy. The three killstreak rewards announced so far are a juggernaut care package, an armored assault vehicle, and the chemical weapon white phosphorus.

All three have been seen in some form or another in past Call of Duty titles: Juggernauts were used extensively in the Modern Warfare subseries, as were light armored vehicles. White phosphorus was previously used as a tactical grenade in the Black Ops series–where it caused “a small amount of damage on detonation”–but the framing of the weapon as a “reward” this time around paints it in a somewhat different light. GameSpot has contacted Activision for comment.

In real life, the use of white phosphorus–also known as “Willy Pete”–against civilians and in civilian areas contravenes the Geneva Convention, thereby classing it as a war crime. Some Modern Warfare multiplayer maps take place in civilian areas, albeit without civilian characters present.

Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward told GameSpot recently that it doesn’t want to shy away from hard-hitting issues in the upcoming shooter. “Today, modern warfare means that the war isn’t just over there,” said the studio’s narrative director, Taylor Kurosaki. “The war is everywhere. It’s in our own backyards. It’s in places that can suddenly become a battlefield at a moment’s notice. It’s about enemies who don’t wear uniforms. It’s about civilian collateral damage kind of being, unfortunately, part of the equation.”

Later in the same interview, Kurosaki said the game will punish you for making mistakes on the battlefield: “If you were a soldier and you actually deployed into a theater of war and you shot down a bunch of innocent civilians, you would be arrested and court marshaled. The game kind of does the same thing. The game does not allow you to get away with going rogue. You have a command structure that you have to follow and orders that you have to follow and if you try to just be a bad apple, the game is going to smack you down for that.”

However, Kurosaki was talking about the game’s single-player campaign–which also depicts child soldiers, among other serious topics. It’s unclear if the multiplayer mode will treat the use of white phosphorus as harshly as it sounds as if the story mode will treat “mistakes.” It’s this that is the root of some of the latest controversy.

For more, you can read our full Call of Duty: Modern Warfare single-player interview. A full reveal of Modern Warfare’s multiplayer offering is coming on August 1, but we’ve been given a sneak peek already with the new 2v2 Gunfight mode. Modern Warfare launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 25.

This week in RDO, earn bonus rewards for participating in Elimination Series events, get bonus XP from Ability Cards, and more.

Artist Doug Chiang recently shared a piece of previously unseen concept art from the archives of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.

Chiang, who currently serves as the vice president and executive creative director of Lucasfilm, shared the “wild concept” of the semi-destroyed Death Star 2 rising out from the sands of the Jakku desert via his Instagram account on Monday.

“Deathstar ascending! In the early days of EP7, we explored some wild concepts (before we had a script). This was for a dream sequence of the Deathstar 2 rising out of the desert of Jakku,” he wrote in the caption of the highly detailed illustration.

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The PlayStation 4 has reached a huge milestone. According to Sony’s latest earnings report, the console shipped 3.2 million units worldwide during the first quarter of the fiscal year 2019, up from the 2.6 million it moved during the final quarter of FY2018. When combined with the 96.8 million units the system had sold as of this past April, that brings its global lifetime numbers up to a staggering 100 million.

According to video game analyst Daniel Ahmad, the PS4 has now become the fastest console to hit the 100 million mark, surpassing both the PS2 and Nintendo’s Wii. It took the PS2 five years and nine month to reach that milestone, while the PS4 was able to do so in five years and seven months. Sony expects to sell 15 million PS4 systems this fiscal year, which would bring console up to 111.8 million units by March 31, 2020.

Hardware wasn’t the only milestone Sony surpassed. In the same earnings report, the company revealed that digital purchases of full PS4 games during this past quarter hit 53%, the first time more players had purchased digital copies of games over physical ones. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus reached 36.2 million subscribers–up year-over-year from the 33.9 million it had in the first quarter of FY2018.

These are especially impressive results considering the PS4 is entering its seventh year on the market, and its successor, the PS5, is looming on the horizon. While the next-generation console isn’t expected to launch until at least 2020, Sony has already begun revealing tidbits of information about it. The company has already confirmed it will be backwards compatible with PS4 games, and we know the system will still have a disc drive and use a solid state drive.

While PS5 may be approaching, there are still a few major releases in store for the PS4. Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s enigmatic Death Stranding launches on November 8, while the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake arrives on March 3, 2020. The Last of Us: Part II is also on the way. While it doesn’t yet have a concrete release date, Ellie actress Ashley Johnson teased it could be launching in February 2020.