First Mobile Call of Duty Title from The Blast Furnace™ Delivers a First-Person AND Third-Person Multi-Touch Experience for Fans On-the-Go

Sydney, Australia– September 6, 2013 – Call of Duty® fans can take the action on-the-go with Call of Duty®: Strike Team, available at launch exclusively for iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch®.  Call of Duty: Strike Team is optimized for mobile and tablet glass mechanics*, offering a choice of how to play: as players control a squad of up to four highly trained Strike Team members, each with customizable skills and loadouts, the in-game view can be seamlessly switched from classic first-person action, to a top-down, third-person perspective providing a full range of both action combat and tactical decision making.

Call of Duty: Strike Team represents the first Call of Duty mobile title from Activision’s new mobile development studio, The Blast Furnace™, led by veteran developers Mark Washbrook, from Rockstar London, and Rockstar Leeds legend Gordon Hall.

“Call of Duty: Strike Team is all about giving a single player experience that is unlike anything else in the Call of Duty world in a way that matches the interests of players on-the-go,” said Mark Washbrook, Studio Head of The Blast Furnace. “By giving fans the option to play in either first-person or third-person views, and to switch between them on the fly, we’ve really opened the doors for gamers to have a fun and entertaining gameplay experience with Call of Duty: Strike Team, because they can play the game the way they want.”

Call of Duty: Strike Team features both a new, story-driven single player campaign that’s full of epic, cinematic Call of Duty moments, as well as a highly-replayable single player Survival Mode, packed with many of the franchise’s weapons, perks, ranks, and prestige levels. The game lets players compete with family, friends, and other players for leaderboard domination. Plus, players with an existing Call of Duty account can sign in with their credentials to Call of Duty: Strike Team for exclusive, in-game bonuses.  Players can register for a Call of Duty account for free on the web.

Published by Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI), and developed by Leeds, U.K.-based The Blast Furnace, Call of Duty: Strike Team is now available for $7.49 from the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch or at www.AppStore.com/CallofDutyStrikeTeam.  Call of Duty: Strike Team will also be available later this fall on Android™ devices.

For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com/striketeam, www.facebook.com/CallofDuty, or follow on Twitter @CallofDuty / @CallofDuty_ANZ.  For free registration of a Call of Duty account, go to www.callofduty.com/.

Xbox One Racing Team to race in the 2013 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 and immortalises the Bathurst track in its latest racing game release“Forza Motorsport 5” 

SYDNEY, Australia. – September 5, 2013 – Xbox Australia with Triple Eight Race Engineering today announced that they are launching the Xbox One Racing Team in the 2013 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. To celebrate, Xbox Australia and Turn 10 Studios, the makers of the Forza Motorsport series, have also announced the Bathurst track, Mount Panorama, will be included in the highly-anticipated racing game, “Forza Motorsport 5” set to launch exclusively with the new Xbox One console on November 22, 2013.

With international champion race car drivers, Andy Priaulx and Mattias Ekström behind the wheel, the Xbox One Racing Team will be boosted by the support of long time Xbox ambassador and Team mentor, Mark Skaife and Triple Eight Race Engineering Team Owner, Roland Dane.

Alan Bowman, Regional Vice President, Microsoft, Greater Asia Region said, “Xbox has had a strong association with the sport of V8 Supercars over the last decade and for years Australians have been asking us to include the Bathurst track into the Forza Motorsport games. We have taken notice and to celebrate the inclusion of the Bathurst track and two V8 supercars in ‘Forza Motorsport 5’, we will launch a truly international and competitive racing team.

“This is unprecedented in Australia. After months of working in secret to create a piece of racing and gaming history, we are excited to finally reveal that the wildcard entrant and 29^th car making its mark at Mount Panorama this year will be the stunning Xbox One Car,” concluded Alan.

The Xbox One Racing car is the latest Holden VF Commodore and comes equipped with a 5.0 litre naturally aspirated V8 Holden which has an estimated output of 640bhp and a top speed of almost 300kph.

Six-Time Bathurst Champion, Mark Skaife said, “This is a milestone not only in racing, but gaming history and I’m proud to continue working with Xbox as we turn Aussie gamers’ dreams into a reality.”

“The Bathurst 1000 is watched in 137 countries around the world and now, with the inclusion of the famous Bathurst track at Mount Panorama in Forza Motorsport 5, Australia’s place in the global racing circuit will be cemented in one of the highest rated racing game franchise in history,” said Mark.

Triple Eight Race Engineering Team Owner, Roland Dane said, “There is no surprise that we love a challenge. When we heard this unique proposition from Xbox to turn everyone’s most-loved racing game into a reality on-track, we knew it was too good an opportunity to pass on.

“Andy and Mattias are two of the best Touring Car racing drivers in the world today and I can promise Bathurst and V8 fans that this will be one team to watch come race day in October,” concluded Roland.

Developed by Turn 10 Studios, “Forza Motorsport 5” is a cinematic automotive journey designed exclusively for the Xbox One. Innovation is at the heart of “Forza Motorsport 5” with ground-breaking features that are only possible on Xbox One, including a worldwide network of always-evolving “Drivatar” opponents powered by the cloud and a new graphics engine that delivers stunningly realistic visuals.  Built from the ground up to take advantage of Xbox One and starring the world’s greatest cars and tracks, no game better delivers the wide-eyed thrill of racing.

Dan Greenawalt, Creative Director at Turn 10 Studios said, “Few circuits have been requested more by the worldwide Forza fanbase than Bathurst, and for good reason. It holds a special place in motorsports history as one of the most demanding and challenging circuits in the world. In addition, the timing couldn’t be better to finally bring Bathurst to the Forza series; with ‘Forza Motorsport 5’, we’re able to bring the circuit to life in a way that nobody else can.

“Through the use of cutting-edge technology like laser-scanning and our new materials-based graphics engine, we can now precisely reproduce the characteristics of every corner, straight and detail to sub-centimeter accuracy; from the narrow twists and turns of the Esses, to the thrilling rollercoaster sprint down the Conrod Straight. This is the Bathurst that racing fans have been asking for years and we’re proud to bring it to them in ‘Forza Motorsport 5.’”

For more information and assets about the Xbox One Racing Team, the Xbox One or Forza 5 Motorsport, click here.

At Creative Assembly we are very pleased with the response to ROME II, with hundreds of thousands of players enjoying the game so far; but we do know that, as with all large PC releases, the variety of hardware and general system specifications can cause issues for some people and we are urgently working to help get them the right experience.

As announced last month, we are also planning to tweak the balancing, AI routines and other features now that we’re getting real-time metric feedback from thousands of players.

The result is that the first update to the game will drop this Friday, with the intention to update the game on a weekly basis in the immediate future.

Full patch notes will be available on Friday, but the update will address known instances of crashes due to hardware conflicts alongside several other performance fixes.

In addition, anyone experiencing graphical issues including low resolution textures, should check our support forums at www.totalwar.com/rome2support which contain suggestions for settings which will improve visuals in almost all cases.

There are also a variety of other fixes suggested in our support forum, please head there to find out more or report your own problem directly to the CA team who will assist you.

On September 26, the epic season of Downloadable Content (DLC) for Call of Duty®: Black Ops II culminates with the release of Apocalypse for PlayStation®3 and PC fans. The fourth and final DLC Pack from Activision and its award-winning studio Treyarch lets players dig into four thrilling and diverse multiplayer maps, as well as Call of Duty®: Black Ops II Origins – the all-new, wildly creative Zombies experience that reunites players with the original heroes going back to Call of Duty®: World at War, and closes this chapter of the Zombies story arch for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Apocalypse multiplayer maps include:

• Pod: A failed utopian community from the 70’s has left stacks of dilapidated residential pods nestled into an abandoned cliff side in Taiwan. Its residents long gone, the modernist compound now hosts frenetic combat as players must run atop the pods, as well as navigate their multi-tiered interiors for a strategic edge.
• Frost: Fresh snow meets explosive gunpowder in this snow-capped European city, where the bridge over a frozen canal separates it into two sides, requiring players to employ multi-level traversal strategies to outsmart and ultimately outshoot their enemies.
• Takeoff:  Fans of “Stadium” from the original Call of Duty®: Black Ops First Strike DLC will find themselves at home on “Takeoff.” Marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this remote launch site is all about close-quarters combat, combining tight corners with open spaces for intense encounters.
• Dig: An adaptation of the fan-favourite “Courtyard” from Call of Duty®: World at War, where two archeological dig sites in Afghanistan become the perfect playground for combatants eager for hectic, unceasing confrontations. Treyarch, has retained the spirit of “Courtyard” with two major chokepoints, a wide open layout and raised platforms, but has provided fans with a fresh take on the multitude of paths.

Apocalypse also features Origins, the most horrifying and imaginative Zombies experience to date. Players will be deployed to a Dieselpunk-stylized World War I-era France where they will encounter the return of the four original heroes – Tank, Nikolai, Takeo, and Richtofen – from the very first Zombies map featured in Call of Duty: World at War, as well as hordes of undead that have overrun the French countryside’s trenches and fields, as well as the ruins of an ancient and mysterious location.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops II Apocalypse DLC Pack is available al a carte for an RRP of $19.95, or for download by Season Pass holders. Call of Duty: Black Ops II game (sold separately) is required to play this Map Pack.