Yet more evidence has appeared to suggest Modern Warfare has a battle royale, but there’s still no sign of an official announcement.
Modern Warfare has proven to be the most successful Call Of Duty this generation and it’s done it all without battle royale, despite repeated suggestions that the mode is coming to the game.
Talk of a 200-player battle royale has been going on since Modern Warfare was first announced but despite datamining seeming to find plenty of evidence that it exists it’s never been clear when it’s supposed to be released.
One idea is that it was intended to be a free-to-play spin-off but whatever’s going on updates seem to keep adding new references to the mode, including the loading screen above.
As with anything like this it could be faked – by people that want five minutes of internet fame in exchange for spending hours making a fairly anonymous looking render of a city port – but YouTube channel The Gaming Revolution claims it was sent the image by an anonymous dataminer.
But even that’s not the smokiest smoky gun as an image purporting to be the map for the battle royale mode leaked onto Reddit almost six months ago.
There is a suggested explanation for the delay though and it’s that the mode is simply taking longer than expected to complete and that’s why Season 1 has been extended – so battle royale can still be a part of Season 2.
None of this would be deemed unusual if not for the fact that Call Of Duty’s relentless yearly release schedule means a new game will no doubt be unveiled in a few months’ time.
Modern Warfare was announced later than usual, right at the end of May last year, but even so, there’s very little time to announce a major new feature for one Call Of Duty without immediately getting caught up in the hype for the next one.
The next game is widely believed to be Black Ops 5, after apparent turmoil at Activision upset the usual order of developers working on a new game in three year cycles.
That means its Treyarch’s turn again, after just two years, so there’s always the possibility that – given the success of Modern Warfare and the delay in the battle royale mode – that there might not even be a new Call Of Duty this year.
Although whether the release of the next generation consoles this Christmas makes that more or less likely is open to speculation…
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