The upcoming big thing for the Call of Duty series is the Modern Warfare title that will come to us this October. This game is a massive project from Activision to redo this dying series. With it, they want to push with the thematic directions for the series while keeping that tremendous blockbuster-style gameplay. Moreover, the company is also on the look for a more "portable" course for the popular shooting franchise.
Call of Duty: Mobile
This mobile installment in the series is a free-2-play standalone game. Timi was the one who develops this title; in fact, this developer belongs to the Chinese giant Tencent. Their aim with this game is to bring the feels and looks of the original series to the mobile platform with many familiar maps and game modes from Black Ops and Modern Warfare installments. And not surprisingly, this mobile game also features battle royale gameplay.
At the time of this article, they have already soft-launched this game in Indian and Australian markets and would follow suit in other regions. To know more about this release GameSpot had an interview with Chris Plummer ( Vice President of Activision' Mobile). Here is a summary of this meeting about subjects such as microtransactions and the intentions of the game:
The interview
He stated that Activision had experiences in publishing big mobile games before, the same goes for their PC and console business. So they have lots of high rates of experiences. The trend currently is mobile gaming, that is also where the bigger audience is, and they are quite usual with the free-2-play game model, and that is where this game is heading for. Activision looks to give the audience a world-class authentic Call of Duty experience that they could play right from their smartphone for free.
Timi studio
About the matter of cultural differences from Timi studio from of Tencent, he said that they and Timi have been working together very well to deliver a fantastic mobile game. He also acknowledges the differences between the West and East, so they also embraced that into the UI and software of the game.
The targeted audiences
Plummer also hopes that the game will be able to reach many audiences around the world including the usual FPS players and die-hard fans of the series. They hope to gives those CoD fans that have grown up with the game but now are too busy to pick up a controller a chance to experience the game again. They have used modes, weapons, characters, and maps from Black Ops and Modern Warfare, so they are sure that the fans will be satisfied. The team has focused on delivering the Call of Duty experience above all when making this mobile title. They went deep on the CoD contents and FPS system, so this new mobile game is genuinely a portable Call of Duty.
Battle Royale
The new game also features a Battle Royale mode which is a standalone mode that combines the elements of Black Ops and Modern Warfare, according to Plummer. He thinks that it is an entertaining and unique mode to try out, and the team has also conducted testing in a few regions.
Monetization
On the ever-touchy subject of monetization, Plummer said that they have got lots of experiences from their past titles. They have taken into account what has been done well by other FPS titles on mobile as well as the audience's opinions to better their monetization model. To perfect this model, they had also brought their own considerable experiences in creating mobile games, FPS games, and free-2-play services in the past. The most important to them that is bring the "right" CoD experience to the audiences, and they have committed to do that above all.
We are also not sure that they will be any tie between this mobile game and the upcoming CoD release of this October. Plummer only said that the team is focusing on pulling together contents from various CoD franchise, including Black Ops and Modern Warfare series.
Social games
He also said that mobile social games' successes like that of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Pokemon GO are a good thing which introduces new models and new players to the platform. He likes that there are unique cultural phenomenons, and mechanics continue to emerge in the world of mobile gaming. For them, they focus on delivering an authentic FPS experience on the mobile, the signature CoD gameplay, a combination of the whole franchise into a game that fit into people pocket.