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?

Infinity Ward said a new trailer for Modern Warfare 2 was going to come out soon and they delivered on their promise. Two minutes of tasty new footage is posted above for your consumption, and you should get a pretty good meal to satisfy your hunger for now.

The long awaited sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will be released on 10 November; and that’s a worldwide release so you can be shooting people from around the world on day one.

Although the trailer only shows the singeplayer campaign (from what I can gather anyway) it’s the multiplayer that most people will no doubt be looking forward to. Personally I thought both the single and multiplayer modes were equally entertaining, and based on their past Call of Duty games it’s hard to see how Infinity Ward can possibly go wrong in either case.

Below are three screenshots to go along with the trailer.

Activison sure like to tease when it comes to hotly anticipated sequels. Today they released a trailer showing a whole 10 seconds of gameplay footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 - the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - that was first teased without gameplay back at GDC.

The trailer quickly moves between some shots of helicopter action, a fight on a snowy runway, divers underwater, snowmobile action and what looks like a level similar to the air assault level on Call of Duty 4. At the end of the trailer an announcer states that the full trailer to premier on May 24th during the Eastern Conference Finals; which is no good to us in the UK, but the footage will no doubt make its way onto the Internet within minutes (to see the new trailer picked apart go here)

Game Informer magazine also used today to reveal the cover of its June issue, which promises a ‘World exclusive first look at Modern Warfare 2‘. Apparently there will be 10 pages of info and screenshots that will probably be on the Internet before the magazine even hits the newsstands.

The magazine will also feature 6 pages on DJ Hero (see here) but we know you don’t particularly care about that!

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warefare is, without a doubt, the best FPS game available on current generation consoles (excluding the Wii). Its excellent multiplayer modes are still heavily frequented by gamers two years after release.

For those of you still playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the Xbox 360 (that’s most of the Xbox Live population then) and you haven’t already reached ten prestige then you’re in look! Infinity Ward are holding a double XP weekend starting tomorrow and running through until Sunday (which is midnight US pacific time, so if you want to play into the wee small hours of the night then you can). Also included is a discount on the Game of the Year Variety Map Pack, which is getting slashed from 800 Microsoft points to only 400.

If you’re a big COD4 fan then you should already have the map pack, so the offer probably won’t mean much to you. Likewise, if you’ve already reached 10 prestige then double XP won’t exactly mean much to you either. Although I do play COD4 when I get the chance (mostly because everyone on my friends list seems to play it constantly, with a brief few days break when GTA 4 came out) I have yet to reach my first prestige while my cousin hit ten a while back and now just plays for the fun of it, although he plays it far too much in my opinion. Fortunately this means that double XP is very attractive to me and I’ll no doubt be playing my fair share of the game this weekend.

A few members of Infinity Ward will also be joining the fray on Saturday. Hit this link to find out their gamertags and what time you can expect to shoot them in the face (although it’s likely to be the opposite).

COD4 Weekend Brings Double XP, Half-Priced Maps - Kotaku