There has been a lot of speculation surrounding whether competitive Call of Duty (CoD) would remain on the Xbox One now that Sony have the marketing rights starting with Black Ops 3 or if it would in fact stay on the Xbox One.
Today at the Gamescom 2015 press conference Activision and Treyarch have revealed that competitive CoD is in fact making the move to PlayStation 4 which will be the first time we have seen a PlayStation in competitive CoD since Black Ops 1.
‘PlayStation is the new home of Call of Duty eSports.’ David Vonderhaar
Activision have also advised that the new eSports features for Black Ops 3 will only be available on current gen consoles and PC. Last gen consoles will not be getting the new features that are being implemented nor will they get their hands on the new Arena game mode (league play).
Current gen consoles and PC are really shaping up to be the only place to bother playing Black Ops 3 if you are a big fan of the franchise.
Beenox and Mercenary Technology are working on porting Black Ops 3 to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and at this stage there is still no confirmation if DLC maps and therefore a season pass will be available for those who choose to remain on the last gen consoles.
There was also an announcement that Black Ops will have a Live Event Viewer in the actual game which allows you to press a button the watch the competitive CoD games directly from within the game. No more need to find links or watch laggy streams, just boot up your game and away you go.
Here is the quick rundown of the new features being added:
- Arena is the Black Ops 3 system for ranked competitive play, where consecutive wins earn players into progressively higher ranks up to the elite Masters Division.
- Specialists introduce a new dynamic to multiplayer with powerful weapons and abilities that can be earned over the course of a match. The Specialist Draft is a pre-match selection process, designed for Arenas and tournaments, in which each team is allowed no more than one of each Specialist weapon or ability, encouraging teams to plan each player’s role strategically for the mode of play.
- The new Bans and Protects system creates a meta-game around selection of content. With this system, each player gets one (or multiple) votes that they can use to either ban or protect a specific piece of content from Create-a-Class, Scorestreaks or Specialists. This adds a new layer of strategy to competition, while supporting the empowerment of competitive organizations and individuals to restrict content based on their own tournament guidelines.
- Black Ops 3 brings big changes to the CODcaster Mode for commentators and viewers. Casters can specify which settings they want to use when the game starts in the pre-game lobby and change the settings in-game as well. Also for casters, the new Quick Settings menu grants access to the most commonly used caster tools on the fly, allowing for speedy changes to be made right in the middle of the action. For spectators, watching competitive Call of Duty is about the teams. Casters can now specify team names and primary team colors – overriding the default, in-game faction names. Additionally, the loadout widget has been overhauled to allow casters to visually illustrate details about specific players’ loadouts and equipment configurations. Black Ops 3 also supports recent innovations in Call of Duty such as full-screen view and X-Ray mode.
- Black Ops 3 marks the return of fan favorite competitive modes including the fast and frenetic Uplink mode, where players face-off in an effort to send a satellite careening into the enemy’s goal. Additionally, perennial favorite modes Search and Destroy, Capture the Flag and Hardpoint are set to make their return as part of the Black Ops 3 multiplayer mix.
