Activision has released the original Call of Duty as an Xbox Live Arcade game, complete with the single-player campaign and multiplayer modes.

The game has been released on the Xbox Live Marketplace under the name “Call of Duty: Classic”, and costs 1200 Microsoft Points (which roughly amounts to $15 U.S.).  The game also comes free with the Hardened and Prestige limited editions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The return of the original Call of Duty was announced back in March of this year.

… just in case Modern Warfare 2 hasn’t given you your CoD fix.

I found a sand castle in Battlefield 1943 today.  Spotted on the smaller island alongside Guadalcanal.  Apparently there’s one on Wake Island as well.

It’s Swedish. EA DICE is based in Stockholm, after all.

The Xbox Live Arcade incarnation of the Battlefield series has now been dated.  Battlefield 1943 will be released as a downloadable title on July 8.

Battlefield 1943 is a sequel to the original Battlefield title, Battlefield 1942.  The game takes place during World War II in Pacific locations, and uses the Frostbite game engine that EA DICE developed for Battlefield: Bad Company, complete with the destructible environments.

The game will be online-only, featuring the classic Conquest-style game mode on three multiplayer maps.  Once the Xbox 360 community collectively racks up 43 million kills, a fourth map will be released.

Meanwhile, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is still in the works for a release in early 2010.

Well, I’ve fallen behind on my blogging, and what a week for that to happen.  I didn’t have time to post all of the news on here, so I posted most of it to the Xbox Living Twitter account.  Here’s a rundown of what’s going on:

• Point Lookout, another DLC for Fallout 3, will be out on June 23
• Halo 3: ODST will be out on September 22
• Dragon Age: Origins will be released on October 20
• Forza Motorsport 3 will be out in October
• Assassin’s Creed 2 will be out November 17
• Left 4 Dead 2 will also be out November 17
• Alan Wake finally emerged with a trailer on Xbox Live.  It will be out Spring 2010.
• Final Fantasy XIII was shown off on the Xbox 360.  It will be out Spring 2010.
• A new Halo title was announced.  Halo: Reach will be out in Fall 2010.
• Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will be out in 2010
• Crackdown 2 was confirmed to be in the works.  A short trailer is available on Xbox Live.  The game promises “unprecedented levels” of multiplayer, both coop and competetive.
• Metal Gear Solid Rising is in development for the Xbox 360
• Square Enix announced a third-person mech shooter, Front Mission Evolved
• Microsoft announced Project Natal, a camera controller that will eliminate the need to hold anything.  It has facial recognition features and can track body movements.
• Microsoft promises that the Xbox 360 will get Modern Warfare 2 DLC maps first
• Joy Ride will be a free-to-play driving game featuring Xbox Live avatars
• Wolfenstein 3D is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace
• Sony announced that Final Fantasy XIV, the next Square Enix MMO, would be PS3-exclusive.  Later, they admitted it was coming to PC also.  Even later, Square Enix said it may still come to the Xbox 360.  Nice try, Sony.
• Microsoft says the Xbox 360 will be supported until 2015 at least
• The Xbox 360 will get support for Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm

So that’s most of it.  Lots of exciting games to check out in the next little while.  Be sure to follow @xboxliving on Twitter to get more updates as they happen!

Have a look at the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game, Star Trek: D-A-C.  The game is a fairly simple space shooter, to go with the upcoming Star Trek film.  Multiplayer and a wide range of ships should make it fun.

As the movie is meant to put a little cool back into the Star Trek universe, this one should make its games more accessible. Who doesn’t love a little classic arcade-style gameplay?

Online retail giant Amazon has begun selling Xbox Live Arcade titles, along with Microsoft points, from its online store.  Amazon.com launched the new store yesterday in the U.S.

When purchasing Microsoft points or Live Arcade games from the site, Amazon will email you a code to use on Xbox Live in order to download the title.

The advantage of this is that it prevents Microsoft from obtaining your credit card information.  I’ve personally had this problem — where Microsoft billed my credit card when it wasn’t supposed to, and reversing the charges (and getting them to remove my card) took quite a bit of work over the phone.  I’ve vowed never to give my credit card information to Microsoft again, so buying from Amazon gives me an alternative to purchasing points from a physical store… that is, if the service ever comes to Amazon.ca.

The original Call of Duty seems to be set for re-release.  The game has been sighted online as having been rated and certified for release.

The original Call of Duty was released on PC platforms in 2003 and quickly became a hit.  The game will be appearing on Xbox Live Arcade sometime in the near future, and will also appear on the PlayStation Network.  No release date or official announcement has been made.

The news comes just after Activision and Treyarch have released the first map pack for Call of Duty: World at War, and Infinity Ward have given Modern Warfare 2, the CoD4 sequel, a November 10 release date.

Great news for Battlefield fans: we’ve got two new games confirmed by EA’s DICE studio.

This summer, we’ll get Battlefield 1943, a multiplayer-only game that will be downloadable on Xbox Live.  It will focus on the Pacific area of combat.

Then, in about a year from now, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will come out.  Like the first BF:BC, Bad Company 2 will feature a full singleplayer campaign (a sequel to the first) and a multiplayer component.  EA’s relase explains:

“Bad Company 2 takes everything that players liked in the original and ups the ante – more vehicles, more destruction and more team play.”

Both games are using the Frostbite Engine seen in Battlefield: Bad Company.

I was getting worried that they weren’t doing much beyond the cartoony PC game, Battlefield: Heroes.  It’s nice to know that us Battlefield junkies will get their fix… (Call of Duty fans get one every year, you know.)

Microsoft has announced that it will be giving the Xbox Live Arcade game Undertow away for free to any Xbox Live members that want it. Consider it a “thank you” from Microsoft for being a loyal subscriber to their online service.

Actually, the free game is a quiet “we’re sorry” — an apology for the network difficulties that Xbox Live had over the holiday season. They announced at the beginning of the year that they would be giving us a free game, and this is it.

I was kind of hoping we’d have our pick of games to download for a limited time, but I suppose this will do. Undertow looks pretty cool, so it’s worth downloading to try. It’s an underwater shooter-style game that has some pretty impressive 3D visuals for one of the Xbox Live Arcade titles (which are normally much simpler).

The game will go live for free at 10am GMT this Wednesday, January 23 and will stay up for free until 8am GMT on Sunday, January 27. Both Silver and Gold members are able to download the game for free.