Xbox Event Opens with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Live Demo
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LOS ANGELES — Microsoft started its biggest game event of the year with a live demo of Activision’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare this morning. It was loud and crazy, with a hellish combat scene and enhanced futuristic soldiers who could jump dozens of feet into the air.
Microsoft revealed the news at its press conference at the beginning of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big video game tradeshow in Los Angeles. The guy behind me was yelling half the time during the demo. Yes, it’s that time of year. Get ready for some serious fan boy enthusiasm and game turf fights. After the demo, everybody’s wristband turned red. The demo was the first live demonstration of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which is being developed by Activision’s Sledgehammer Games for release this November.
Phil Spencer, who took over as head of the Xbox business earlier this year, opened the event by thanking gamers and their feedback for making Microsoft’s console and its games better. Then he went right into a hands-on demo of the Call of Duty game, which will likely have exclusive content on the Xbox One game console.
In the demo, the supersoldiers fought an intense firefight in a city’s streets. They used weapons like an infrared enemy identifier that highlighted hiding soldiers. They took them out with noisy submachine guns and helicopter gunship support. A swarm of drones, which looked like a flock of birds, attacked the soldiers. At the end of the demo, the main soldier was wounded and dragged away. As he was dragged away, his arm fell off.
The Advanced Warfare game is set in the near future, when infantry weapons have been nearly perfected and supersoldiers use exoskeletons that give them heavy body armor and the capability to jump to the top of buildings.
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