Gaming News Round-Up: April 7th, 2005

Today's round-up includes the official unveiling of the Call Of Duty sequel, more bannings of online players from Blizzard Entertainment, and more. - Activision has announced that it will be reuniting with developer Infinity Ward to release Call of Duty 2, a sequel to its period FPS which the company claims will "deliver an unparalleled portrayal of the chaos and intensity that was World War II." Also vaunted is a proprietary new engine, as well as "striking new visuals, advanced A.I. technology, the most realistic squad combat and explosive action in new historic campaigns." Call Of Duty 2 is scheduled for release this fall for unspecified platforms, a possible indication that the next-gen Xbox is one of the target SKUs. - Blizzard Entertainment has once again cracked down on online cheaters for one of its games. However, it's not MMO World Of WarCraft that's the target this time, but rather still popular RTS WarCraft III. According to official word over at Battle.net: "In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating, we have permanently closed 5,900 Warcraft III accounts. 2,300 of the Warcraft III CD keys used with the now-closed accounts have been banned from ladder play for one month, and 500 more have been banned from ladder play permanently." It's likely that these accounts were using unauthorized third-party scripts or other more exotic cheating devices. - Also updated on Gamasutra today (free reg. req.): we finish the Question Of The Week on retail prices for next-generation games with a bonus feature rounding up the most detailed responses. There are also newly advertised jobs from Atari/Humongous, Atari/Paradigm, Buena Vista Games, Factor 5, Humanhead, Rockstar Games and Stormfront Studios.