It seems the key concern with multiplayer this time round is balance. Housed within the mammoth complex at LA's Hercules Campus, built by Howard Hughes to facilitate his Spruce Goose project, it was a noisy and confident briefing with tantalising glimpses at the future of the franchise's vital online component. The company chose its CoD XP fan event in Los Angeles to reveal key details of Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer mode to 300 members of the world's press.

Activision certainly knows how to work a room – or in this case, an aircraft hangar.