Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile arrives today on iOS and Android devices. This adaptation of the now classic Call of Duty Battle Royale has been developed largely from Barcelona, ??specifically in the Digital Legends studio, which has been owned by Activision Blizzard since 2021.
With this new installment, Activision wants to bring the Call of Duty experience anywhere and reaffirms its commitment to Free-to-Play games with micropayments. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is literally what the name suggests: a mobile version of Call of Duty: Warzone.
Warzone Mobile’s main game mode is a 120-player Battle Royale on the Verdansk map, the original battlefield of the first Call of Duty: Warzone. Fans of the franchise have been calling for the return of Verdansk for years and Activision Blizzard has decided to play the nostalgia card to attract those players to the mobile experience.
The developers’ goal is to make the transition from console and PC gaming to mobile gaming smooth and seamless. In the style of Roblox and Fortnite, the platform doesn’t matter, the important thing is to play whenever and wherever. For this reason, progress and experience is shared between Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, Modern Warfare III and Warzone 2.
On the other hand, and beyond Battle Royale, Warzone Mobile also offers classic competitive game modes such as Team Duel, Casualty Confirmed and Domination on maps such as Scrapyard, The Asylum, Hotel, Shipment and Shoot House.
A total of six studios have participated in the development of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, although the one that interests us the most is Digital Legends. This Barcelona studio has been part of Activision Blizzard since October 2021 and, therefore, for a few months it has also been owned by Microsoft and Xbox.
Digital Legends has been developing video games for mobile devices for many years. Some good examples are Afterpulse, The Respawnables or Battlefield Bad Company 2. Although it is surprising to see the leap in scale and production values ??with Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.
The Senior Game Designer of Warzone Mobile at Digital Legends, Javi Gutiérrez, shared at the beginning of March that the game has exceeded 50 million pre-reservations, so success can already be anticipated.
Activision Blizzard has been trying to establish Call of Duty as a primarily multiplayer experience for years. Something closer to gaming as a service than to classic premium video games with an annual delivery. On many occasions, the campaign mode feels more like an add-on to the multiplayer than an essential part of the game.
This was clearly seen with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which received a lot of negative reviews from the press and players. In fact, there was controversy because consoles and computers detected the game as an expansion of Modern Warfare II and not as an independent title. On the other hand, the campaign mode incorporated playable elements typical of Warzone, which broke the rhythm and immersion.
And, although many fans don’t like it, it makes sense that everything in Call of Duty ends up orbiting Warzone. This new version for mobile is one more step in the same direction: towards a global and shared Call of Duty experience in which the platform does not matter. A few paragraphs above I talked about Fortnite and Roblox and it is no coincidence.
Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile promises to offer an experience analogous to console and computer games: 120-player matches and next-generation graphics and gameplay. In addition to shared progression between all current Call of Duty online modes.
It is difficult to predict how this will end. Activision Blizzard is committed to games as a service and Free-to-Play, although this does not mean that it will stop developing premium Call of Duty installments. In addition, one of the conditions that allowed Microsoft to close the purchase of Activision Blizzard was the commitment to continue publishing new Call of Duty games on PlayStation and other platforms for the next 10 years. So there will be Call of Duty for a while.
