You may have heard that those who purchase the Modern Warfare 2 Hardened or Prestige editions will get a token to download Call of Duty Classic (which, obviously, is the original Call of Duty) on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. However, if you don’t want to pay the, quite frankly, ridiculous prices for these editions (the standard edition is bad enough, retailing at a staggering £55!) you will have to wait a little while longer to get your Call of Duty Classic fix.

The game will eventually be made available to everyone via Xbox Live and PSN, complete with working multiplayer, but Infinity Ward is not saying when. I understand that they want to offer people incentives for paying more, but why not release it at the same time anyway and just charge for it? I don’t see the point in limiting it to certain people. I suppose there’s the exclusivity aspect, but you’re also limiting the amount of people available to play against online.

“Prestige and Hardened Edition buyers will be getting access to Call of Duty: Classic first. It’ll eventually be coming out for both Xbox Live Arcade and PSN as a stand-alone arcade game.

However, price and release date are unknown at this point. It’s the true original Call of Duty including full multiplayer.” - IGN

In any case, at least we will be getting it eventually. I’ll probably be downloading it as soon as it becomes available, simply because Call of Duty remains one of the best FPS experiences I’ve ever had. I cannot begin to count the amount of hours I sunk into playing the game online on my PC, and I also made some pretty good friends through it too. It’s a shame that user created levels probably won’t be available in Call of Duty Classic, as that was one of the main draws for me in the original release, but people should be aware that Call of Duty still enjoys a somewhat active fan community on the PC and you will still be able to find an online game if you’re interested.

The major problem with this move is that, well, will people actually bother to play Call of Duty Classic when they’re busy playing Modern Warfare 2?