Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (MWIII) was supposed to be a DLC to its predecessor.
Dataminers found in a PlayStation Network code for the third entry of the hit remade first-person shooter series that Activision originally planned it to be a future DLC for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (MWII).
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is set for public release on Nov. 10 according to several game leaks.
A Two-For-One Experience
Activision's vision for MWII seems to be larger than expected. According to Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, code found in the PlayStation database showed that MWIII was an add-on for MWII. data miners also found that the beta codes used in MWIII have the same concept ID as MWII last year.
As such, Activision is probably reissuing the same codes from MWII's release.
Although Activision has yet to address Henderson's findings, the company did find out one thing. It found that the DLC that was going to be MWIII was so unique from MWII that they had to make the DLC into its own game - a feat not unheard of in the industry before.
You may remember that Rockstar Gaming released the non-canon expansion of Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, as a game separate from its parent game, Red Dead Redemption.
Since Activision has yet to address Henderson's findings, there is little to no information to reveal why the company decided to relegate MWIII as a DLC to MWII. Regardless, the content MWIII has will be worth looking forward to since it is big and unique enough to make the jump from DLC to a standalone game.
How big exactly is still a mystery, but if its price tag is anything to go by, players will be in for a surprise.
An Activision spokesperson confirmed in a statement to CharlieINTEL that MWIII will have a $70 price tag due to its release being designated as a premium one. This pricing is allegedly by numerous Activision Blizzard quarterly conference calls.
Whether the game's contents would justify its $10 increase from the usual $60 AA game price is still up for debate.
A New COD Hub
Aside from MWIII almost becoming DLC to MWII, data miners also found that Activision seems to have decided that COD will get its hub on PlayStation (for now, at least). The code revealed that MWII will change into a COD Hub, which will display MWII, MWIII, and Warzone in one menu.
The decision makes sense for Activision - many of MWII's assets are available, or "carried forward," to MWIII. These assets include weapons, camos, and progression from MWII.
There is no word about Call of Duty: Warzone getting an upgrade from 2.0 to 3.0, per Gameranx. However, Activision is set to reveal MWIII in an in-game Warzone event on Aug. 17, with MWIII's first beta weekend happening from Oct. 6 to Oct. 10.
