Call of Duty: Black Ops made to beat Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty Black Ops thumb - man against fire

Design Director of Treyarch has been speaking about the team's aspirations for Call of Duty: Black Ops, saying: “Every developer dreams of making the No.1 selling title in the history of gaming.” He listed Modern Warfare 2 as a great inspiration and the game the team most wanted to beat.

Call of Duty: Black Ops blew Modern Warfare 2 out of the water with massive first day sales. Treyarch shifted 5.6 million units in their first day, compared to Modern Warfare 2's 4.7 million. Now Treyarch are hoping to beat Infinity ward with first week sales of their first DLC pack, First Strike, which adds new maps to Call of Duty: Black Ops. Vonderhaar says that the motivation to compete with Modern Warfare 2 doesn't come from Activision, but from within the team.

“People don't come by our offices and say: 'Hey, this game sold this many map packs, you better do the same or all bets are off.' Those aren't conversations that happen. The team has a constant desire to one-up themselves, so the pressure comes internally.

”Our senior level designer, Phil Tasker, is always pushing and I am constantly pushing back saying: 'Are you crazy? That's so ambitious. How are we going to execute it?' And he's saying: 'We've got to do it.'"

First Strike has already been released on Xbox 360, there's still no news of a PC release date, but Treyarch say there are "more details to come." You can check out some screens of the new maps contained in the pack here , or head over to the official First Strike site for more information.

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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.