SAN FRANCISCO—Activision has taken the wraps off its first major Call of Duty video game for smartphones. The title is simple enough: Call of Duty Mobile. The online, multiplayer-only game will arrive later this year, but neither Activision nor any of its Western CoD-focused studios will lead the game's development.
Instead, dev duties will be handled by Tencent, one of China's leading mobile-game publishing houses. Activision clarified that Timi Studio, makers of the popular mobile game Arena of Valor, will lead development within Tencent.
Call of Duty Mobile was unveiled at today's Unity keynote presentation as part of the 2019 Game Developer Conference, because it has been built in the Unity Engine. An Activision representative at the Unity event said that players can expect "beloved maps, competitive game modes, and signature combat mechanics from [Call of Duty entries like] Black Ops and Modern Warfare." Teased maps coming to the series' first-ever mobile version include Nuketown, Hijacked, and Crash, and fans can expect traditional CoD multiplayer systems like kill streaks.
In terms of modes, Activision said players can expect either 10-player free-for-all combat or five-on-five modes like team deathmatch and search-and-destroy. The event did not include any mention or hint of a potential 100-player battle royale mode, as seen in the PC and console versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
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An Activision rep showed off the nuts and bolts of how Call of Duty Mobile will scale to a variety of smartphones, particularly by streamlining things like animations and pre-baked visual effects.Sam Machkovech
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Go ahead, fake like this CoD soldier on your smartphone.Sam Machkovech
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Alone or with friends. (We don't know how players will team up with known friends, whether through existing matchmaking services or a new one.)Sam Machkovech
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Familiar deathmatch arenas.
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More familiar deathmatch arenas.
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Activision didn't show actual gameplay at the reveal, and that means we don't yet have a sense of how players will pay for the game. We can only assume that cosmetics will figure into a microtransaction model, but nothing has yet been confirmed.
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The game's modes will include team deathmatch, search and destroy, and free-for-all combat; Activision hinted to player counts maxing out at 10 per battle, so don't expect a mobile CoD battle royale just yet.
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In case you missed the message: it's coming to your phone.
Activision promises "60 frames-per-second graphics, low latency, and super responsive controls" in the game to come. No raw gameplay was shown, however, so it remains to be seen how important aspects like on-screen controls and general UI will look. We're also in the dark about how monetization and microtransactions will figure into the experience. A brief demonstration of CoD Mobile's current state, as broken down in the Unity Editor, included explanations of mobile-friendly graphics tricks like static shadow masks and dynamic, cascaded shadow maps.
Interested players can now pre-register at callofduty.com for the iOS and Android versions.
This article has been updated to confirm the game's development studio.
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