We have some interesting news to share with you now, as it has been revealed that one big name retailer in the UK won’t be offering arguably one of the biggest games to release on the gaming calendar this year. The retailer is ShopTo who many of you will be very familiar with, while the game that they are refusing to sell is none other than Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty Ghosts title.

It has become apparent that ShopTo and Activision are in the midst of a dispute, due to the fact that this year’s Call of Duty title will have a worldwide ship date of Tuesday November 5 2013, as opposed to a Friday release in the UK when other publishers usually put out their games.

ShopTo are unhappy with Activision’s policy regarding ship dates, as they require retailers to only start shipping games, one day before its official release date, so that they arrive on launch date or in most cases – slightly after. If you have ordered from ShopTo before, you’ll know that they have an excellent reputation for delivering on time and in most cases – gamers will often receive their pre-order a few days earlier than the actual launch date.

Activision are obviously unwilling to allow this to keep happening with their Call of Duty games, and as a result, ShopTo has now decided to boycott the release of Call of Duty Ghosts completely. In previous years, ShopTo would have sent Call of Duty copies out on a Monday or Tuesday – in time for a release on Friday in the UK, or maybe even before.

With Activision’s Tuesday release date, ShopTo has now said that Activision has effectively killed off their whole pre-order incentive, which they say will hurt their reputation if consumers decide that they are no longer reliable. The full details are available over at Eurogamer, and it’s certainly a very interesting read.

What do you make of this? Some will applaud ShopTo over their loyal stance in keeping up their great relationship with consumers, but then again – it could be a massive mistake to boycott one of the biggest games of the year. Have you ordered a game with ShopTo before and received it ahead of schedule? If so, let us know your thoughts on this.

In a short space of time in which the new Xbox console has just been confirmed for a May 21 reveal, we now have another bombshell to bring you. Call of Duty Ghosts has been unveiled early as the next entry in Activision’s shooter franchise, with Infinity Ward once again behind the helm on development duties.

We know what you’re thinking – what happened to Modern Warfare 4 right? Apparently, COD Ghosts is going to be the next part of the Modern Warfare series, so number 4 – but it just won’t be called Modern Warfare 4 for some reason. It also means that the hugely popular Ghost character from the series is going to be getting his very own game and a much more centralized storyline around him.

UK supermarket Tesco jumped the gun with an early retailer listing for the game, while US retailer Target has done the same thing across the shore. We’re a bit bamboozled as to why both retailers would leak the game at the same time, especially risking the wrath of Activision in the process who haven’t had the chance to unveil it themselves yet.

Regarding platforms, we’ve heard conflicting information. Both retailers have listed Call of Duty Ghosts for release on Xbox 360 and PS3, but we’ve also heard the the game will be landing on PC and next-gen consoles as well such as the PS4 and Microsoft’s imminent Xbox console.

Will the retailer’s premature excitement now force Activision into an early reveal, just like what happened with Modern Warfare 3 prior to its initial announcement? The Tesco listing has now been removed, but not before the damage has been done – the image above shows part of the official box art for the game.

Also take into account that Target has mentioned a Call of Duty Ghosts release date of November 5 – a logical period for when new Call of Duty games usually arrive. As we await official confirmation from Activision, give us your reaction to a new game based around Ghost, without the Modern Warfare 4 title.

We all have a favorite map in Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and one of ours has to be Hijacked, although this map also has to be one of the worst for spawn system problems. Since the games release we have heard from a number of our readers in regard to the Black Ops 2 spawn system being broken, and while we knew it had been bad at points it hadn’t been enough for us to publish an article on. This all changed this week once we got hands-on again in preparation for the new Revolution DLC.

If you are a Black Ops 2 player then you would know that Hijacked is set on a boat and has to be one of the maps that best shows how bad the spawn system is, which is even more clear when you spot other gamers finding horrible ways to perform spawn trapping. We have featured a video below this article that showcases spawn trapping in Black Ops 2 on Hijacked, and while this is only going to make people hate gamers that do this, it is good to highlight this problem in the hope that it gets fixed.

There’s nothing worse than finding other gamers spawning just behind you on Hijacked, or any map, so we would love to hear your thoughts on this and spawn problems you’ve experienced in Black Ops 2? Are you happy with the spawn system in this version of Call of Duty?

Black Ops 2 freezing a problem still for some on PS3 – you only need to look at our article from last month, which revealed a number of gamers are still experiencing problems with their PS3 crashing and freezing while playing Black Ops 2. This isn’t an issue all PS3 players are complaining about, but the developers have acknowledged it and are trying to fix with patch 1.05.

Some PS3 gamers claim they found a way to fix the freezing on the PS3 version of Black Ops 2, which involves uninstalling the texture pack although we are sure this would be something most PS3 owners would prefer to avoid. It might be worth holding out for the next patch before thinking about uninstalling the texture pack.

Are you happy with the way Black Ops 2 performs for you in multiplayer and zombies mode, and if not what would you like to see fixed in the next update?

There will be a number of problems needing a fix within Black Ops 2 patch 1.05 on the PS3, although we can officially confirm that the Sony console is still experiencing crashing and freezing issues for some gamers. Our PS3 Slim model has crashed once today after an hour and another time after just 10 minutes, which happened while reviewing Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and meant a hard reset had been needed. This is not a new problem and we thought everything had been solved after installing Black Ops 2 patch 1.04, but sadly that is not the case in our tests and according to a couple of emails we received from PR readers.

It is also worth pointing out that we’ve heard from a number of gamers that had been experiencing Black Ops 2 freezes previously on the PS3, but these were fixed after installing the last update. Two PR readers emailed us within the last few days complaining that the crashing is still there, but we could only confirm this with our system today. The crashing is likely a problem that will not affect every PS3 gamer, so we’d love to hear from PR readers and find out how many of you are still having problems with Black Ops 2 after installing the latest patch?

What needs fixing with Black Ops 2 patch 1.05? The developers will never be able to satisfy all PS3 players, although having to hard restart your console a few times a day is not a nice experience and one that can damage a hard drive over time. If you have a wish list for Black Ops 2 patch 1.05 we’d love to hear it, so hit the comments with your requests. Is there a problem really bugging you in Black Ops 2, which you feel needs to be addressed in the next update?

We’ve just checked Black Ops 2 on the PS3 and found patch 1.04 for download, which seems to have gone live only moments ago. The details about this Black Ops 2 PS3 update are sketchy with full 1.04 patch notes expected within the next 24 hours. It is hoped by a large number of gamers that this latest update fixes the crashing and freezing problems PS3 players are experiencing, although it is fair that not all gamers report the same severity of issues.

Over the last couple of days Black Ops 2 players on the PS3 have been increasingly frustrated at certain problems, and this resulted in increasing posts in official forums asking when patch 1.04 would release for the PS3, which we already knew had been in development. This led to the Twitter account for Activision Support posting a short tweet about the next Black Ops 2 patch, which you can see in the image below. This basically explained that the 1.04 patch would go live on PS3 in the US at 11PM PST, which would mean a global rollout to the UK and other countries would progress after this time. We can confirm that the UK has now received this latest update.

Do you see Black Ops 2 patch 1.04 on your PS3, and if so what’s your country and location? The tweet explains that the Xbox 360 will receive its next title update this weekend, and patch notes about what has changed will arrive in due course. Our PS3 Super Slim had no crashing problems although the older model we have did experience hard resets after freezing, which we’ve played for around 30 minutes since Black Ops 2 patch 1.04 without any issues, so fingers crossed this finally fixes the problem for everyone.

We’ve finally been able to get the Black Ops 2 vs. Halo 4 sales figures for the first week on Xbox 360, and this is completely fair considering this is only for the Microsoft console and doesn’t include the PS3 as well. Just over a week ago we reported the first 24 hours of sales for both Halo 4 and Black Ops 2, but these didn’t look at one platform, so the total units sold that are shown in the figures below are for the most popular on Xbox 360. It is worth noting that some gamers claim you can’t compare these sales thanks to the games going after different markets and types of gamers, although the bottom-line is people want to know what game sold more in week one on the 360.

We already started to see signs of lower Black Ops 2 sales in the UK a few days ago, and now the figures are in thanks to this source it shows global unit sales are down as well. Black Ops 2 moved 11m units on all platforms, 6.21m on just the Xbox 360, which is 2 million less than the 13.36m Modern Warfare 3 did in the same period last year.

If we compare this to the Halo 4 sales for Xbox 360, they’re widely reported to be 3.8m for the first week, which is a considerable amount less than Black Ops 2 on the Xbox 360. Both of these first week figures are impressive by any means, but did you expect the Black Ops 2 vs. Halo 4 sales to turn out this way when looking at just the Xbox 360?

Why do you think the first week of Black Ops 2 sales are down when compared to MW3? It is very interesting to see the sales slip between the two Call of Duty games, although we can’t wait to see if this will be the case overall or if just the first week is affected.

We can’t help but feel the new Black Ops 2 zombies mode is the best to date, but at the same time playing the PS3 version has been met with a number of problems, which most notable is the crashing that happens less often since patch 1.03, but still happens. If you own Black Ops 2 on the PS3 then you might have experienced freezing as well, which in most cases means a hard reset and this has led to some big problems that no PS3 gamer wants to see with their system.

Since the launch of Black Ops 2 we’ve been hands-on with both the PS3 and Xbox 360 version, so that we can deliver an impartial take on both versions of the game, and while the Xbox 360 version did suffer from connection issues during our time with the game, it has been the PS3 version of Black Ops 2 that has had the most serious problems.

The image you see below is what happens when you keep having to hard reset your PS3, and thanks to Black Ops 2 crashing and freezing it meant a corrupt message had displayed. This isn’t a one-off and has happened a few times a day when playing Black Ops 2 zombies and multiplayer, so having to check the system for corrupt files is not what you want to keep doing, especially considering crashing can cause damage to a hard drive if it continually happens. It is worth noting that this issue is only happening with Black Ops 2 on our review machine.

Have you seen corrupt messages on your PS3 after Black Ops 2 freezes and crashes? Let’s just hope that this problem is fixed permanently after Black Ops 2 patch 1.04, and also hope that it doesn’t take until 1.05 or later to see a fix. It is also worth noting that we’ve had a number of our readers explain the issues went away after the last patch, although just as many are reporting bad crashing still and this is even after reinstalling the game as well. Personally things have got better since the last update, but the freezing problems are still there and happen every couple of hours.

If you’re an Xbox 360 user then you can see the full patch notes for your first update in this article. Other than the freezing in Black Ops 2 on PS3, are you experiencing any other issues and how do you find the new zombie maps?

Most Microsoft console owners would know about the first Black Ops 2 Xbox 360 patch that went live within the last 24 hours, if they play the Call of Duty game that is, and this Black Ops 2 update has followed a number of fixes for the PS3 platform, which is due to some serious crashing and freezing on the Sony console. While the PS3 has experienced a lot more problems than the Xbox 360, it is worth pointing out that both systems have gamers reporting about lag and connection issues when trying to play online with Black Ops 2 matchmaking.

We’ve embedded the Black Ops 2 Xbox 360 patch notes below, which came thanks to a recent update by Activision Community Support that explains exactly what got fixed, and also clearly shows what has been missed and is plaguing Xbox 360 gamers. The first patch, aka title update 1, has fixed some really focused problems with the Xbox 360 version of Black Ops 2 and you can see this in the list of fixes below. These include improvements to live streaming, fixes to emblem icons, UI error messages, spawning, and a lot more.

Black Ops 2 problems remaining on the Xbox 360 – we’ve heard about a number of issues still being experienced after the patch is installed, although the most common problems are focused on lag and connection related problems when playing Black Ops 2 in multiplayer and zombies. One user said they’ve had enough of “inconsistent connections and broken perks“, and explained that all they get is lag while playing with friends and family on the Xbox 360.

Do you believe your Black Ops 2 connection and lag issues are not your end? We’d like to point out that some Black Ops 2 issues can be related to your Internet connection, so if you find a zombie come from nowhere while gaming on the Xbox 360 or PS3, then make sure your connection is not to blame first. The classic “where did he come from, I just shot him 6 times in the head and he’s still alive” can certainly be connection problems your end in many cases. We’ve already heard that patch 1.04 is being worked on for the PS3, which should fix freezing still being experienced by some gamers.

There is no doubt in our mind that when Black Ops 2 first launched the only thing some gamers could think about had been leveling up fast, which is the beauty of the Black Ops 2 Prestige system and some know how to level up faster than others. Today we wanted to feature a video that has been uploaded to YouTube a couple of days ago and runs for just over 7 hours, which the video creator likes to call a live Black Ops 2 Prestige marathon. We wouldn’t recommended you spend 7 hours watching all the gameplay, but it would be interesting to hear your comments on how you think they did, and if you are better at ranking up through the Black Ops 2 Prestige levels?

If you haven’t had a chance to play Black Ops 2 yet then this video is the perfect time to gain a lot more insight into the game, although we have to admit after playing the Black Ops 2 zombies mode and experiencing the new zombie bus and other innovative gameplay elements, it is clear that the latest zombies mode has taken the game to a whole new level. It’s pretty crazy considering zombies were originally just a side game for Call of Duty, but this had been the main reason we went hands-on with Black Ops 2 and it’s also the only reason some people purchase the game.

Black Ops 2 Prestige and level up fast – there are some basic things you can do to reach levels that much quicker, which includes completing challenges for extra XP, and also making sure you Prestige Black Ops 2 weapons that you are best at thanks to receiving a little level XP bonus each time you rank a weapon up. There are obviously some more tactical ways to Prestige fast that don’t include camping, so feel free to share in the comments below – how do you level up fast?

We’ve already heard that Black Ops 2 patch 1.04 is being worked on, so feel free to share what you want to see fixed, and see our article from the start of this month that included the Black Ops 2 prestige emblems. What level of Black Ops 2 Prestige are you currently at?

There are numerous reasons being thrown around as to why Black Ops 2 on the PS3 is experiencing major freezing problems, crashing, and other connection related issues when playing online, but we’ve been impressed by the rapid release of updates to try and find a solution to these issues. In the last 24 hours we’ve heard directly from Activision, and they’ve stated in so many words that Black Ops 2 patch 1.04 is being worked on for the PS3.

The moment Black Ops 2 update 1.03 went live we published details about this attempt to fix problems with the PS3 version, although this led to more discussion in relation to new issues appearing after the patch. PR readers confirmed that hard resets still needed to be done after installing the latest update, and crashes continued to plague certain gamers but it’s worth pointing out not all users are affected. In fact we’re now running Black Ops 2 on a PS3 Slim and also the latest Super Slim, and strangely we’ve had constant freezing on the Slim but no problems on the newer PS3.

Black Op 2′s first double XP weekend ended up a nightmare for a lot of PS3 gamers, although Activision didn’t try and defend their position and instead confirmed on their support website that problems still remain. They said COD: Black Ops 2 had received a patch to fix the freeze/lock-up problems, which some people are meeting when playing the PS3 online, although “some customers” still have problems with their PS3 freezing and they’re doing “everything” possible to fix these lock-ups and to find a solution. You can see the exact statement here, which shows Black Ops 2 patch 1.04 will likely release within the next few days in another attempt to fix the PS3 problems.

Do you have any problems that need fixing in Black Ops 2 patch 1.04? You might want to see our article from earlier today about the UK first week sales of Black Ops 2 being less than expected, and is reportedly less than the two previous Call of Duty games for first week sales in the UK.

We took the screenshot above when looking for parts that you can see at different areas of the map when you leave the zombie bus. You need to hunt for parts and take them to set locations, which then allow you to build different items that can be used in your effort to withstand the endless onslaught of zombies. We personally love the shield that allows you smash zombies flying, although you miss out on gaining valuable points for purchasing guns when using the shield.