Call of Duty: Mobile is the name of Activision-Blizzard’s latest mobile game scheduled to hit Android and iOS devices in the second half of the year, most likely be late summer. Announced on late Monday, the incoming game is a first-person shooter almost exclusively focused on classical CoD multiplayer experiences, including Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, and Free-for-All.
While the game will be packed with a handful of original maps, some fan favorites from previous installments are set to make a return as well, with some of the already mentioned ones being Hijacked and Nuketown. More multiplayer modes and maps will be revealed later this year, the game’s publisher said.
Surprisingly, Call of Duty: Mobile isn’t an in-house project, with its development being helmed by studio Timi, a division of Tencent, the Chinese entertainment congl0merate that also holds a sizeable stake in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, in addition to outright owning gaming hits such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ and League of Legends.
Two years back, Blizzard unit King had a serious slip-up by disclosing the existence of Call of Duty: Mobile with a massive banner plastered over its careers page. While the revelation was initially interpreted as purposeful, the fact that King removed it in a matter of device indicates that wasn’t the case. Regardless, the former listings specifically stated the Candy Crush maker is working on a Call of Duty mobile game, with that title now seemingly being close to its release.
Android gamers can already pre-register for a chance to be part of the crowd that gets to participate in the closed beta development phase of Call of Duty: Mobile, with Activision-Blizzard accepting sign-ups via the Google Play Store.
Both clans and ranked play will be on offer, with the team behind the upcoming mobile game quite obviously counting on setting up an eSports scene around its next release. While the last few console iterations weren’t as massively successful as some of their predecessor (though they still outsold the majority of the industry), the Call of Duty name has enough to pull to turn any kind of experience into an international hit.
The role Tencent’s subsidiary is playing in this project suggests either King or at least one of its two main parents didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of the Candy Crush maker handling a high-budget mobile game aimed at non-casual audiences. While King isn’t formally associated with the endeavor any longer, it’s still believed to have contributed to it, having prototyped an early version of the title and handled the firm’s initial talent acquisitions while the full development of Call of Duty: Mobile was yet to begin.
The closed beta of the multiplayer-focused FPS will be starting this spring and China is expected to have servers separated from those delivering content to the rest of the world, industry insiders said last year. Players can expect a traditional CoD multiplayer progress system with countless rank titles and items being the mix, tempting gamers to speed up the progress to their next target by spending money. The game’s free-to-play business model has already been confirmed, with developers claiming that monetization strategy won’t affect their efforts to deliver console-quality entertainment to smartphones later this year.