Call Of Duty demo out
Gimme gimme!
Typical. If coming down with 'flu and shivering in bed wasn't bad enough, I managed to miss one of the most hotly anticipated demos of the year - Activision's mighty Call Of Duty, from Infinity Ward, the 2015 breakaway team.
If you want to find out just what all the fuss is about, head to 3D Gamers or 3D Downloads or File Rush or whatever download source you prefer this week. It's a fairly hefty 174.8MB, but we reckon it'll be worth it if you've got the kit to do it justice and fancy "Allied Assault with bigger explosions" as Rob summed it up as this morning.
When we get a moment we'll put it through its paces and let you know what we think of it; it certainly looked very swish at Activision's recent Activision event, and we were certainly impressed.
Meanwhile, an open letter has been passed around various disgruntled websites who are evidently unhappy that publisher Activision chose to release its demo through Fileplanet subscribers only. Here it is for your reading pleasure...
"After discussions with Activision, the following websites will not be carrying the Call of Duty playable demo, even after its exclusivity is over. This is due to Activision's decision to not accede to the reasonable request of making the demo freely available to all game enthusiasts at the same time.
- 3D Downloads
- 3D Gamers
- AusGamers
- Blue's News
- EdgeFiles (Callofduty.org)
- FileFront
- FileShack
- GameGossip
- Gamer's Hell
- Loadedinc
- Tiscali Games
- WorthPlaying
"The above-listed websites hope to show Activision that the enthusiast industry is strongly opposed to the idea of exclusive demo releases.
"Feedback from our users shows that gamers hate to be forced through a single point of congestion if they want a demo right away. While these websites are actually competitors, this competition provides the freedom of choice that enthusiasts want by offering the widest possible distribution of any demo (a sample intended to interest as many gamers as possible in the full product, after all) rather than the most restricted one.
"Therefore, something this disrespectful of the industry as a whole has inspired all of these websites to stand together in this open letter.
"Deals like this hurt the industry much more than they could possibly enhance a single relationship, and we ask for your support in sending out this message."
UPDATE Activision reacted quickly to the displeasure of the various websites and made the demo freely available soon afterwards. "The recent reaction to the upcoming Call of Duty demo has caught us here at Activision by surprise," a spokesperson said. Uh oh.
Gamespot later grabbed Activision's director of global brand management David Pokress, who was admitted "demand exceeded our expectations". Quite how Pokress thought that the spiritual successor to Allied Assault wasn't going to cause a stir is beyond us. And obviously a whole pile of extremely disgruntled Internet sites.
Nevertheless he also said "Our fans mean everything to us, and in the end, we wanted to do the right thing for as many people as we could." Is this a worrying sign of things to come, or a one-off genuine mistake?