xbox live

This weekend was great! After lurking at Prestige 1 lvl 55 for nearly a year; the double XP this weekend enticed me to finally prestige again. That, coupled with watching 007 Casino Royale on Friday night, made me want to get to at least level 37 to unlock the suppressed G36c for some stealthy action.

All said and done, I was able to rank up 45 levels between Friday and Sunday night; I could have done a bit more, but that was without neglecting the family.

I experimented a lot with Perks I never used before this weekend and have found a pretty sweet combination for playing Hardcore Team Deathmatch and Hardcore Search and Destroy (which is where I mainly hung out this weekend).

First of all, screw the M16. I’m done with it. It’s dead to me. The G36c is where it’s at. 

Add a  little Bomb Squad for picking up enemy claymores in Search and Destroy so I can stay alive and warn team mates where to plant.

Some obligatory stopping power (although it’s not really needed in Hardcore); Once I unlock a more stealthy perk I’ll switch it out.

Finally, Last Stand. Which I never used before but have gotten damn good at this weekend. You couldn’t imagine how pissed off people get when they put you down and then you headshot with a pistol. Hilarious and makes you not so angry when you get killed. All in all, I was bringing my a-game most of the weekend with this set-up. 

So how did you guys do this weekend? Any one rank up an an entire 55 levels or more?

Now that the Xbox Live weekend is finished, we have the PS3 weekend coming up this weekend (I believe). We’ll have official confirmation on that soon and a full post detailing it, but I as I said before you guys can expect the same treatment for the most part. Minus the prestige picture pack, as regretfully PSN avatars are reserved to 1st party devs only :sadface:. I’ll get you PS3 players all the details on the weekend soon.

Heads up that this weekend from Friday the 12th - Sunday the 14th on Xbox Live (PS3 event will be later, closer to the 18th), we’ll be having Double XP all weekend long on every playlist. In addition, we’ll be doing some DLC promotion on the Xbox Live Marketplace that will allow you to download the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Map  Pack for 50% off, which means you’ll be able to snag all four maps for just 400 MS points. 

That’s not all though, thanks to so many of you who have written in and requested; we’ve been able to work it out to get the Prestige Gamer pic pack back on the marketplace for download for all those who missed out on it’s limited offering during our last LIVE fire weekend. 

Some of the IW crew and myself will be jumping on this weekend to prey on all the new Variety Map Pack owners wandering lost in Chinatown, ripe for the picking. Be sure to add the following Xbox Live gamertags so you can join in on some of the games:

The official Play With Devs time is Noon - 4pm PDT on Saturday, but we’ll be jumping on and off unofficially all weekend long. This is all going down exclusively on Xbox Live this weekend, but don’t worry PS3 players, because we’ll be doing the same for you guys ; but due to schedule conflicts we couldn’t do them back to back so the PS3 weekend will be closer to Sept the 18th  (I’ll have a dedicated post for our PS3 users on that event), but you can expect some of the same benefits and festivities. 

Back from PAX means back to work, and while it’s a short week thanks to Labor Day it’s the one time I wish it wasn’t because I have a lot of stuff to get done. I’m currently working on getting everything organized and together for an upcoming Xbox Live / PSN promotion we have coming up the weekend of Sept. 13th - 14th. Which isn’t this weekend, but next weekend. I will have exact details on what it is in the near future but I have a gut feeling it’ll have Double XP attached to it for all those hungry for some power-leveling on Call of Duty 4.

Currently working on designing some Xbox Live banners to promote it on the marketplace and attempting to get everything together for it on our end. This promotion is technically unrelated to the new Playlists, but I won’t lie that my hope is to finish them up in time so that we can make it all one big promotion. How epic would that be? Our awesome QA team and producers are helping me push hard to make it happen by the weekend of the big promotion, no promises, but as always I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

I knew there were a lot of us out there, but just how many? Well, I received the reports this week and it looks like our COD4 online community stands at over 10 million strong (Xbox 360 / PS3)! That’s all unique players too, so 10 million different people have logged on for online multiplayer since buying the game in November. Those stats don’t include people who have never logged into MP, only those apart of the Online Community.

That’s insane. With a little over a million players logging in everyday for multiplayer, I can’t say I’m too surprised. It’s awesome to think that we’re all part of building something so massive, and when I say we, I mean me, you, all of us. Everyone who logs on to play with their friends, reads the blog, contributes on the forums, took part in the beta. You guys shaped this game and what it is today. We have one massive, powerful, community and all of you should be proud because there is honestly no other game community I’d rather be a part of. So when I say this, know that I mean it… THANK YOU!!!

We have some new multiplayer playlists in the works to breath even more life into multiplayer, in addition to that I’m working on a few other things behind the scenes that I can’t talk about just yet (in case they don’t come to fruition).

This really makes me want to have another Community Party (anyone remember the COD2 all night?). If any Los Angeles locals are interested in having a COD4 Community Meet-up / Community Party, let me know and let’s put one together!!

This IS Me

It’s come to my attention recently that there are a few gamertags floating around out there that “appear” to be me, but are not. Regrefully, some of them (ahem…IAMfourzerotwo) are attempting to scam players out of Microsoft Points. The others, are just harmless impersonators. Which I appreciate, but I thought I’d make it clear, who is…. and who is NOT me. For Example:

THIS IS NOT ME

Neither is this…

… and believe it or not… neither is this.

Hopefully that clears up any confusion. Thanks to everyone who sent me messages, emails, and PMs letting me know about this. I really appreciate the help!

That said, if you’d like to send me an actual message (friends list is full atm, but feel free to message), you can do so at my ACTUAL gamertag here:

http://live.xbox.com/en-US/profile/profile.aspx?pp=0&GamerTag=fourzerotwo

or head over to the Contact / Connect page for my email, twitter, AIM, linkedin, myspace, facebook, PSN ID, XBL gamercard, friend feed, or other modern means of communication you prefer!!

Playlist Update: As for the playlists. Nothing new at the moment. Hardcore HQ is completely good to go, and we’ll probably release it as soon as we have another solid one to go with it. The rest are still being tested, tweaked, and fixed. Their descriptions have been fully translated, so as soon as they’re bug free they’ll be good to go.

According to Microsoft’s Major Nelson’s report, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has retaken the #1 spot as the most played game on Xbox LIVE, knocking GTAIV to the #3 spot. This is on the heels of the news that we just passed the 10 million copies sold mark!

THANK YOU to everyone who consistently continues to play the game every night!! To show our appreciation, as always we’re going to be holding a Double XP Weekend this weekend starting Friday morning and going till Monday (yes I know… we always say that, but we’re really going to cut it off at Monday this time… maybe).

The Double XP will be available in ALL PLAYLISTS and will be on both platforms Xbox 360 and PS3!

In addition, we will be tweaking all the playlist map rotations a bit so that the Variety Map Pack no longer shows up 2:1 to old maps. Therefore all maps (old and new) have an equal chance to come up in map rotation, so you won’t be seeing Chinatown pop up 8,000 times or any other new map over and over again.

Thanks again to EVERYONE who continues to support the game and keep it at the top of the charts. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the COD4 T-shirt designs we’re working on and let us know which ones we should get printed up, because we’ll be giving away a lot of them to our loyal players when we do as well as making them available to you on the new Infinityward.com Online store that will launch in late June with the new site.

See you online!

Microsoft’s Major Nelson has posted up his weekly update of the ‘Top Games on Xbox Live’ again and I’m happy to say for the time being (and the past months), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is strongly holding the #1 spot of the most played game.

As we all know, GTA IV hit today, so I expect to see it forcing it’s way up the list in the next few weeks and excited to see how it takes Halo 3’s place as our biggest friendly competitor for the Top Spot of the most played game on Xbox Live. We fought hard to secure and keep the #1 spot for over four months now, and I’m excited to see how quickly GTA IV rises up the list.

Just like at the launch of the game, Xbox Live is hosting another Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare LIVE Fire Weekend starting Friday, April 18th through Sunday, April 20th.

Get ready for some wild multiplayer action as we celebrate the release of the Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfare™ Game of the Year Edition with a LIVE Fire Weekend. We’ve got a 72-hour Play & Win Sweepstakes, a special GamerchiX event, an opportunity to play against the development team from Infinity Ward, and even a chance to mix it up with Mixed Martial Arts champion Jens Pulver.

Be sure to sign up for the “Play with Devs” event going on Friday, April 18thfrom 6:00 - 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time (3:00 - 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time). Look for these Gamertags:

• fourzerotwo
  
• COD4Chance
  
• COD4Justin
  
• COD4Ed
  
• COD4David
• COD4Neel
  
• COD4Geoffrey
  
• COD4Jon
  
• COD4Jeff
• COD4Drew
• COD4Todd
• COD4Joel

Also be sure to add Jens Pulver’s gamertag for the Game With Fame event: COD4JensPulver

Full details on the entire weekend’s events, prizes, and details on how to sign-up for the Play & Win portion, check out the full page at:

Xbox.com - Call of Duty 4 LIVE Fire Weekend Page

*note to PS3 owners: We haven’t been approached or invited to participate in any similar event by Sony, but I’m looking into setting up our own special Play With Devs and similar events when the map packs hit on PSN as well. I’ll keep you posted when we get closer to that date.

Heads up, that the new DLC maps from the Variety Map Pack are now integrated throughout the other playlists, in addition we’ve removed the Variety Map Pack exclusive playlists and heavily seeded the new maps in exisiting ones. Which means you have a higher chance of playing new maps in exisiting playlists. With that change, also came the end of Double XP.

So what was the average rank you guys ranked up during double XP? Anyone do any entire prestige during it?

The ‘Most Played Games on Xbox Live’ list has been posted yet again on Major Nelson’s blog, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has been holding onto the #1 spot for several months now. We revealed recently in a Eurogamer article that there are between 1.2 and 1.3 million gamers playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Xbox Live EVERYDAY! With the numbers on PSN being “monstrously huge” in the words of our Producer, Mark Rubin.

So when I post the Top Games of Xbox Live update every few weeks, think of it as a huge thanks to all of you guys, those 1.3 million of you who are logging into multiplayer every day to shoot each other in the face; because without you it wouldn’t be possible.

With the Variety map pack hitting this past week and a record breaking amount of people downloading them, I hope we can keep that number one spot for a while and make anyone who takes it from us really have to fight for it.

To continue to show our appreciation for you guys logging in every night, and to celebrate the success of the map pack (also the fact that we’ve gone insane), we’ll be extending DOUBLE XP AGAIN! You can continue to get double XP throughout today (Tuesday) until Wednesday morning….. then that’s it….. seriously…. no more after Wednesday morning…. I mean it this time.

Seriously though, thank you thank you thank you for all the support you guys have shown the game. We by far have the greatest game community I’ve ever been a part of (as a gamer).