According to their calendar, the game is set receive ten new maps, six new spec ops missions and two new online modes. The schedule applies to Elite subscribers only, of course; non-paying members will have to wait their turn to get their hands on them.

- February: New map
- March: New map, two new Spec Ops missions
- April: Two new maps
- May: New map, new Spec Ops mission
- June: New map, new Spec Ops mission, new game mode
- July: Two new maps
- August: New map, new Spec Ops mission, new game mode
- September: New map, new Spec Ops mission

This month’s share of DLC, the new maps called Liberation and Piazza, are now available on Xbox Live. PS3 and PC release follow some time later.

“With the Call of Duty: MW3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite, we are delivering on our promise of more new content, more often, and with more variety than ever,” said Activision publishing CEO Eric Hrishberg.

The first DLC nugget is planned for Jan 24 featuring multiplayer maps Liberation and Piazza. Four more content packs will be dropped in the first three months of 2012, with at least one more in Jan, one in Feb and two in March. These five DLCs will also be packaged together for the “entire”, non-COD Elite Premium subscribers. The DLCs, including the content collection, will maintain its timed exclusivity to Xbox 360.

Modern Warfare 3 was released on November 8 and has so far earned Activion a billion dollars, despite being the second most pirated game of last year. I can only imagine the Activision executives like this when they read the report.

The trailer, pasted below, shows actors Sam Worthington and Jonah Hill fending off unseen combatants in an overly exaggerated ‘online match’, with the tagline “There’s a soldier in all of us,” punctuating the climax.

[jwplayer config="meg_600px" mediaid="49010"]

“The advertisement trivializes combat and sanitizes war,” he said.

“After ten years of constant war, of thousands of amputees and flag-draped coffins, of hundreds of grief-stricken communities, did nobody involved in this commercial raise a hand and say, ‘You know, this is probably a little crass. Maybe we could just show footage from the game.’”

“As Afghanistan intensifies and we assess the mental and physical damage to veterans of Iraq, is now really the time to sell the country on how much fun the whole enterprise is?” he asked.

“Here I point to the giddy howls of one supposed soldier in the commercial as he fires a grenade launcher at some off-screen combatant. War is great, see? It’s like a gritty Disneyland.”

Summary judgement, from what the Internet tells us, is when a court rules that no factual issues remain to be tried, and therefore a settlement can be had, based on certain facts, without going to trial.

A summary judgement call from the developers was denied as well.

The press release also states that Judge Elihu Berle found that the evidence presented by Activision “supplied a basis” for a jury to conclude that EA, may have in fact, aided and abetted West and Zampella to breach their contracts.

A jury trial in the case will begin on May 7, 2012.

Press release:
Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), announced that the Los Angeles Superior Court has denied a motion brought by Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) for summary judgment, thereby permitting Activision to proceed to trial on its $400 million contract-interference suit against EA.. At a hearing held yesterday, December 21, 2012, Judge Elihu Berle denied EA’s motion, finding that the evidence presented by Activision supplied a basis for a jury to potentially conclude both that EA had intentionally interfered with Activision’s employment agreements with former Call of Duty game developers, Jason West and Vince Zampella, and that EA had aided and abetted West and Zampella’s breach of fiduciary duties to Activision. A related summary judgment motion put forth by West and Zampella was also denied.

In the suit Activision alleges that West and Zampella breached their contracts and duty of loyalty to Activision by conduct that was insubordinate and otherwise improper and that West and Zampella’s misconduct was caused, at least in part, by EA’s unlawful tampering. A jury trial in the case is scheduled to begin on May 7, 2012.

While the details are scarce, creative strategist Robert Bowling said the DLCs for Modern Warfare 3 will be much more varied than those for the previous installments. It’s the perks of having three development teams – Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games and Raven – on it, apparently.

“The way we’re doing downloadable content this year is unlike we’ve never done before,” he said. “Not only in how you can get it – in content drops or choose for the collection – but also the type of content you’re getting. We’re doing more than just maps. We’re going to do Spec Ops missions and a variety of things that players have never seen before.

“That’s the great thing about having three developers that are contributing to the season of content. You have Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer and Raven all pitching in.”

The DLC will be exclusive to Elite members at first, which will then trickle down to Xbox 360 users, and then PSN and PC users. ’tis how it works, man.

For one, the game now features a ‘Community Playlist’. The playlist will basically feature popular or unique private match modes and add them to rankable public playlist.

“The biggest change you’lll notice is the addition of Community Playlists. This is where we will add popular or unique private match modes to the public playlists, so you can start ranking up on them!,” said the developer.

The first playlist changes to come out of it are the ones below:

DROP ZONE 
Get to the drop zone to earn points, the first team to 7500 points wins the round, but thats not all. As long as the Drop Zone is occupied, a care package will drop every 15 seconds, which ever team has the most members in the drop zone at that point “owns” the care package, but anyone can steal it. This is the only way to earn air support in this mode, all other pointstreaks are disabled. You’ll earn 20 points per team member, for every second they’re in the drop zone plus 20 XP individually for your time spent in the zone. Kills are worth 50 XP in this mode. 

Custom Settings: Pointstreaks (besides those obtained through in-game care packages) are disabled. 

Hardcore HQ Ricochet 
We’ll be adding Hardcore Headquarters to the Hardcore Team Tactical playlist. 

Hardcore Ricochet 
We’ll be converting all Hardcore modes to Ricochet variant as a response to team killing. This means, any friendly fire, is applied to the attacker, rather than the victim. So choose your shots wisely and any attempt to team kill will simply kill yourself.

If you have tried Drop Zone, leave a word about it on our comments section below.

Bowling confirmed that the idea of adding new gameplay modes is currently in talks.

“We’re discussing some additional modes now, I’ll let you know when you can expect that,” Bowling tweeted in response to a follower who suggested adding a hardcore setting to all game modes.

Elsewhere, he stated that changing the number of players in Survival mode is not subject of discussion.

The achieved figure puts Modern Warfare 3 one day ahead the record set by the 2009 feature film Avatar. Impressive.

“Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. “Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.”

Activision also revealed that the newly launched social networking feature for Call of Duty, Elite, has attracted over six million member since its launch along with Modern Warfare 3 on November 8 – with more than 1 million user being subscribed to the premium portion.