Hasta La Gadget!

PS Vita owners may currently be wanting for big ticket games, but that’s all about to change with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. Scheduled to hit sometime in November, Black Ops Declassified is a PS Vita-exclusive take on the immensely successful console game, and today during Sony’s Gamescom presser, we got our first look at Declassified‘s gameplay. We were also given new details about the game’s single and multiplayer modes, so read on to find out more.

We wish we could tell you that Declassified offers a new twist on the classic Call of Duty formula, but judging from the trailer, Declassified looks to be standard Call of Duty fare. For millions of gamers, however, that won’t be a bad thing. Declassified‘s single player mode is set between the events of the original Black Ops and the upcoming Black Ops II, with the player taking on a number of “covert” missions.

Also confirmed today is Black Ops Declassified‘s multiplayer mode, which will feature 8 player, 4 vs. 4 matches. Black Ops Declassified will feature new, Vita-exclusive maps, as well as the return of some maps from the original Black Ops, such as Nuketown. Multiplayer modes that have been confirmed for Black Ops Declassified include Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Drop Zone, but sadly, we haven’t received any confirmation that Zombies mode will be returning in Declassified. There’s a brief look at multiplayer in the trailer, so check it out below.

Finally, Sony also announced that Black Ops Declassified will be the star of a new PS Vita bundle. The bundle doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of extras though, as Sony has only said that it will include a PS Vita, a copy of the game, and a Black Ops-themed pouch. Pricing and the bundle’s release date haven’t been detailed yet, but we imagine this bundle will be launching alongside the game itself in November.

Black Ops Declassified gets first gameplay trailer is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re looking forward to Call of Duty: Black Ops II because of the single player campaign, you’re looking forward to the game for all the wrong reasons. A lot of Call of Duty players out there know that it’s all about the multiplayer, and today Activision and Treyarch gave us our first glimpse at the mode. There’s plenty of Black Ops II multiplayer action to check out in this new trailer, which is posted past the break.

The look we get at Black Ops II‘s multiplayer in this trailer isn’t too terribly long – the video comes in at just over 2 minutes long – but there’s enough footage to get a good feel for the mode. Surprisingly enough, the multiplayer found in Black Ops II does look quite a bit different from the multiplayer in other Call of Duty games, but then again, we suppose it would have to be considering that Black Ops II is set in the year 2025.

This means that there will be new, futuristic weapons to use, including a turret called the Guardian that uses heat to drive foes back, and the Dragonfire helicopter, which you can remotely control to defeat your enemies from a safe distance. We also get a glimpse at the A.G.R. mech, which packs a lot of firepower into a smaller, remote controlled package. There are also a few surprises that we’ll let you discover on your own, so give the trailer a watch below:

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is launching on Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 on November 13, 2012. Some seem to think that the Call of Duty franchise has already peaked, and that Black Ops II won’t make as much money as its predecessors, but we have a feeling that this one is going to do just fine. We’ll undoubtedly be getting more and more Black Ops II media in as we inch closer to its November release date, so keep it here at SlashGear for more information!

First Black Ops II multiplayer trailer released is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Activision’s financial results for its second quarter have landed, and things are looking pretty good for the massive publisher. Net revenue came in at $1.075 billion for the year, which is actually better than the $950 million the company was expecting. Earnings per share landed at a pretty healthy $0.16, which was again ahead of the company’s $0.13 EPS projection for the quarter.

However, even though Activision managed to exceed expectations, it still came up a bit short when compared to the same quarter last year. In Q2 2011, Activision managed to pull in a net revenue of $1.146 billion and was able to boast an earnings per share of $0.29. A significant difference to be sure, but that doesn’t mean Activision had a bad quarter.

It was quite the opposite actually, with Activision announcing that Diablo III has brought in a whopping 10 million players since launching on May 15. We already knew that 3.5 million of those sales occurred in the game’s first 24 hours of availability, and with roughly 1 million of those players getting in for free thanks to the World of Warcraft annual pass, that leaves about 5.5 million sales in the three months since launch.

World of Warcraft‘s subscriber numbers are down a bit, with Activision reporting 9.1 million monthly subscribers at the end of the quarter. That’s a little low compared to where World of Warcraft was at its peak, but those numbers will probably get a boost (at least temporarily) when Mists of Pandaria is released in September. Activision also announced that Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was the number best-selling console game in the first six months of the year “overall in dollars,” which is to say that the company had to count the toy sales in order to name Skylanders the top-selling game.

The company has upped its outlook for the year as a whole to $4.33 billion, and expects to bring in $740 million next quarter. Activision’s boosted outlook is based on the upcoming releases of Mists of Pandaria, Black Ops II, and Skylanders Giants, so that expectation could change if one of those games under-performs. Even if that happens, though, it’s pretty clear that Activision is poised to rake in a ton of cash this year, so we’ll let you go back to wishing you were Bobby Kotick now.

Activision Q2 report: Diablo III captures 10 million players is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve got a slew of Modern Warfare 3 rumors to tell you about today, so sit down and strap in. We may have received our first glimpse at Activision‘s September DLC offerings for the immensely popular military shooter, which will apparently add three new maps to the game: Boardwalk, Gulch, and Parish. The images were initially leaked by Youtube user Gamecheat13 along with a gameplay video that gives us a preview of the Parish map. The video has since been removed, but not before MP1st could snatch up the images and post them for all the Internet to see.

Of the three maps, Parish is the one we know the most about. The map appears to be centered around a run-down cathedral, complete with a bar and a pool area for players to shoot up. Looking at the screenshots, we see that Sunday services are held by one “Father T McCool,” and we also get few looks at an outside area filled with old military vehicles and missiles.

Boardwalk and Gulch remain a little more mysterious at the moment, but there’s plenty we can guess at thanks to the screenshots. Obviously, Boardwalk will be similar to the boardwalks we’re all familiar with, and we can see a bar and a gift shop pictured in the leaked images. Gulch’s screenshots don’t give too much away (other than the fact that it looks to be set in the desert), but one screenshot comes with a descriptive caption that reads “Abandoned Utah mining settlement. Features an open layout and strong flanks.” The name leads us to believe that this may be an homage to the legendary Halo: Combat Evolved map Blood Gulch, but other than our own wishful thinking, there isn’t much to back that belief up.

The original videos uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo by Gamecheat13 focused solely on the Parish map, but before being wiped from the Internet, a few seconds of the video were included in GameSpot’s latest installment of Start-Select, which you can see above. In addition to all of this, MP1st speculates that Modern Warfare 3 players will be getting a new game mode when the August content update drops, and points to a tweet made over the weekend by the Call of Duty Elite account as evidence for this claim. This is all some pretty intriguing stuff, but you should probably take all of this with a grain of salt until we get something in the way of official confirmation from Activision or Infinity Ward. Have a look at all of the leaked images in our gallery below, and keep it tuned to SlashGear for more information!

Modern Warfare 3 September DLC images leaked is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, and I guess the saying holds true for Nintendo with the creation of the Wii U Pro Controller for the upcoming Wii U for the simple fact that they needed to have a conventional controller as part of their line up, otherwise Activision threatened the Japanese game maker that their titles will not make a beeline for the upcoming console. This bit of information was relayed by Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, where he also added, “I don’t get it. I think that essentially this is a solution in search of a problem. I mean, somebody had an idea – ‘let’s make the controller a tablet’ – and there aren’t many games that are going to take advantage of that. Activision never said anything to me, but I know that [for] big games like Call Of Duty they said, ‘No, we’re not putting it on there if you don’t give us a conventional controller’. So they gave in.”

It makes perfect sense to bend over considering the popularity of the Call of Duty franchise in the video gaming world. After all, having the best hardware in the world means nothing if there is no relevant software to help push sales.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nintendo CEO claims Wii U graphics “capabilities” are “close” to PS4 and Xbox 8. Here’s Why, Wii U Online will not charge fees to gamers, says Nintendo,