Call of Duty Series

Call of Duty Series Moving to 3-Year 3-Studio Developement Cycle

Call of Duty Series

"The Call of Duty franchise is shifting from a two-year to a three-year development cycle. No, this doesn’t mean you’ll get a break every once in a while, because Activision has announced that an additional third studio will be getting stuck in.

The upcoming Call of Duty game this year will be Sledgehammer Games solo debut with the franchise, and will be the first title to take advantage of the extended three-year development cycle. They’ll be joining Infinity Ward and Treyarch in a three-pronged approach that will hopefully lead to more innovation for Activison’s huge franchise…

The announcement was made during Activision’s conference call yesterday, and it’s believed that additional fifty per cent of development time will help push the franchise forward. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said "This will give our designers more time to envision and innovate for each title. Simultaneously, it will give our content creators more focus on DLC and micro-DLC which, as you know, have become large and high-margin opportunities and significant engagement drivers. Finally, it will give our teams more time to polish, helping ensure we deliver the best possible experience to our fans each and every time." Yay, more DLC and microtransactions.

Sledgehammer Games only work to date has been a collaboration with Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, after half the team jumped ship to Respawn and Titanfall. This as-yet-untitled Call of Duty offering will be the team’s first solo endeavour, who have previous pedigree developing the Dead Space series at Visceral Games."

source - Game-Debate

Diablo III Hits 15 Millions Sales

Diablo III Hits 15 Millions Sales Miletstones

Diablo III Hits 15 Millions Sales Milestones and WoW Holds Steady

"In the face of controversy and despite a fair old whack of fan backlash, Diablo III has still managed to stick two fingers up to the gaming world by shifting fifteen million copies to date. World of Warcraft also managed to stop the rot, posting a slight increase in subscribers as figures reached 7.8 million users.

Diablo III arrived on PC back in May 2012, before following up with a September release year for Playstation and Xbox 360. It became Blizzard’s first console release in over a decade for the Warcraft developers, racking up impressive sales ahead of unleashing next month’s Reaper of Souls Diablo 3 expansion…

WoW Expansion Warlords of Draenor Is Incoming This Year

Many thought Diablo III would falter after it was revealed that it would require and always-online connection to play, coming to a head at launch when the servers couldn’t handle the demand and the game was unplayable for days. It’s gone on to see some tremendous sales figures though, as outlined in Blizzard’s latest financial report.

"Diablo III, following its record-breaking success on the PC was the first Blizzard game to come to console in more than a decade, launching on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013,” said Robert Kotick, CEO of Blizzard. “And Diablo III ended the year with over 15 million units sold through cumulatively across all platforms, which bodes well for the upcoming launch of the Diablo III PC expansion pack in March.”

World of Warcraft has already managed to steady out after falling numbers following its peak of 12 million subscribers back in 2010. The upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion is expected to boost figures once more, with Blizzard aiming to shift to a yearly expansion route in order to create sustained interest.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls will be launching worldwide for PC on March 25th, before arriving later in a Playstation 4 bundle containing the original Diablo III. World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor meanwhile doesn’t have a firm release date but is expected to arrive this autumn."

source - Game-Debate

GTX 750 News

First VGA Running on Maxwell Architecture Revealed

GeForce GTC 750

Last week a listing emerged for Nvidia’s rumoured first Maxwell-based range of graphics cards. Now we know that the opening salvo of GPUs from Nvidia will be limited to the GeForce GTX 750 and the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, paving the way for more GPUs using the Maxwell architecture.

Both of the upcoming graphics cards from Nvidia will be mid-range GPUs using the upcoming GM107 GPU score. For now the key difference will be a dramatic drop in power draw in comparison to the GeForce GTX 650 and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, with both cards running exclusively off of power from the PCI express slot…

When the Maxwell architecture has been previously rumoured it was assumed that Nvidia would be moving to a new 20nm process but, for now at least, the chip giant is sticking with the tried and trusted 28nm architecture.

Specs-wise these cards are both stacking up as direct replacements to their counterparts in the GeForce GTX 600 series. The GeForce GTX 750 will come packing 768 CUDA cores, 64 TMUs and 16 ROPs, as well as 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory bus interface. In comparison its more powerful sibling will be armed with 960 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs and 16 ROPs, as well as 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory bus interface. Both cards come clocked at 1085MHz stock, with a boost mode up 1163MHz.

The use of a 128-bit interface looks like it could prove a significant bottleneck when it comes to performance, but these cards are very much aimed at the mid to low-end price range. As mentioned earlier though, one crucial difference with these cards is that they won’t require any external power from your PSU, running instead directly off the motherboard. A PCIe bus is only capable of outputting a maximum of 75w of power, so these cards represent a step up in terms of efficiency.

The Maxwell GM107 GPU is a hybrid between the GK106 and the GK107, combining the memory bus of the former with the CUDA count of the later. In terms of power this isn’t looking like it’s going to be up to much but as an exercise in proving the renewed efficiency of the Maxwell architecture it could bode well. to see this in practice the GK107, in comparison to the GM107, has twice as manner CUDA cores on only a marginally bigger die for around the same total power draw.

It’s assumed that the 20nm Maxwell process will be reserved for later in the year when Nvidia launches its inevitable GeForce 800 series.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 and the GeForce GTX 750 Ti are expected to be release on 18th February."

source - Game-Debate