Amazingly, ‘Call of Duty Online’ didn’t actually exist before now. They’re surely the most inevitable word-sequence in the world, after all. Even so, “free to play micro transaction first person action game” CODO isn’t for us.

It’s one of those bally China-only games that exist to cater towards a community that is even more steeped in internetiness than Western gamers are, and more to the point is also steeped in rampant piracy. A multiplayer shooter that only exists online is, then, a logical step towards capturing the sprinting money-goliath that is China’s immense population. I guess it’s not impossible it’ll walk this way eventually, though for now I believe CoD: Elite is the spearhead of Activision’s Western fortune-hunting interests.

CODO appears to be a collection of latter-day COD’s most famed maps set into a new structure, as created by Activision Shanghai in tandem with Raven, and orchestrated by the partially-Epic-owning goliath that is Tencent.

Here’s a trailer:

Here are the useful things I can tell you about the game:

Really, this is purely a point of curiosity, on how Activision is striving to make CoD an even bigger and more deathless brand than it already is. Given market trends and that our austerity-crazed overlords don’t appear to be in any danger of improving the global economy, I suspect a free-to-play CoD in North America and Europe is only a matter of time – but until then, hope you like spending £40 every November.

Announcement of COD is here, in case you didn’t believe me.