Activision plans to debut Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer Aug. 14

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It’s another year on Earth, which means it’s almost time for a new Call of Duty. It’s always almost time for a new Call of Duty.

We’re in the part of they hype cycle following the debut of the new game where fans are still wondering what changes the developer (Modern Warfare 3 team Infinity Ward) will make to the first-person shooter’s multiplayer mode.

Today, publisher Activision and Infinity Ward revealed plans to detail the new multiplayer mode in an Aug. 14 broadcast on Call of Duty’s website. The developer will stream the reveal live from Los Angeles.

The Call of Duty franchise’s popularity shot off the charts when Infinity Ward launched Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, but publisher Activision has released a Call of Duty every year since 2005’s World War II-shooter Call of Duty 2.

While Call of Duty games always feature a bombastic single-player campaign, the multiplayer is the feature that keeps players engaged for months. With every new entry, Infinity Ward or Treyarch (the other primary Call of Duty studio) makes slight changes to how the competitive modes work, and fans will want to see what Infinity Ward has in store this time around.

Despite that Ghosts will make eights years straight of new Call of Duty games, Ghosts is leading holiday preorder sales, according to analyst firm Cowen & Co. The biggest game of the generation continues to dominate sales charts and gamer engagement, and the multiplayer is key to all of that.