We got our first in-depth look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's multiplayer just a few days ago, and based on the details released so far, this re-imagining of the franchise is well on its way to reigniting the spark that made the original a runaway success over a decade ago. With the evolution of the series being inevitable and necessary, so too is the way that its multiplayer addresses the way in which players are matched against one another.
In addition to bringing a plethora of new features as well as revamping old ones for a new generation of players, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be the first in the series to support cross-play between consoles and PC. Opening up the multiplayer to all platforms is without a doubt the right move, and it's great that the trend is finally gaining some ground after years of stubborn hardware manufacturers putting their foot down against it. That said, the logistics of matching players against one another based on input did not occur to me until I discovered that Infinity Ward was already implementing measures to address it.
Speaking to Dualshockers, Modern Warfare's Multiplayer Design Director Joe Cecot went into detail about Infinity Ward's strategy for how players will be matched:
We’re going to be matchmaking by peripheral, so if you’re a keyboard player you’re going to play with other keyboard players. But, if you’re a console player and you’re playing on a gamepad you can actually opt in…We also don’t let you change your controller or peripheral mid-match, so once you’ve chosen it, it’s locked in.
Being that cross-play is a relatively new concept for mainstream gaming, it wasn't immediately evident that a first-person shooter needed to take special precautions in order to ensure balance between players of different input types. Needless to say, it's a good thing that Infinity Ward was looking ahead for how cross-play should be handled when it comes to a genre where input can be the crux of fair fight.
