Does Activision honestly expect anyone to believe these were unsecured, unscheduled "leaks"? Seriously. Even this so-called memo leak. Whatever. It is all a massive publicity stunt, because they know this is the end of the road for COD. They have overplayed their hand too many times releasing the same game four times in a row with the only difference being they are adding more and more glitches and charging more for it.
People are talking about Battlefield 3 being the game that will kill COD, well I think they are wrong. COD:MW3 will be the game that kills COD and BF3 will be the game to bury it! Obviously there will always be some die-hard COD fans who will buy the next 10 COD's, but let's face it, all the modern COD's since COD4 have all been the same game with no new features worth mentioning other than more glitches and bugs. Also, COD is catering almost exclusively for the console market these days and it shows in the offerings. BF3 on the other hand is making a PC game that will be ported to console and in my mind this is a far smarter move, as this is where the FPS genre made it's name and belongs.
All this is known to Activision and they are pooping bricks, because they realised that unless they finally make a new COD game, MW3 will be the end of the road for their money printing IP. And by new game I mean, a new game, from scratch, a fresh start. They need to create a new engine to make use of today's technology, but their problem is that because they've ploughed all their resources into the console sector, they are going to be left so far behind Dice's Frostbite Engine 2.0 it will look like they are in the Stone Age. So what does Activision due to counter this, they release so-called leaks and the odd screenshot. If it was my company and company documents etc were being released, I wouldn't talk about how great it still turned out, I would find the source and fire his ass. I would also be extremely concerned that documents can also be leaked so easily. This simply makes it more certain to me that these are scheduled releases from Activision themselves and they are putting a publicity spin on it, because they know that the press will publish it, regardless of whether it is true or not.
In a way it is actually a pretty smart way of judging public reaction without having to make an official announcement. If Activision had said they are including feature X, then they are pretty much obliged to include it despite public reaction, or risk losing face. So they rather release it under the guise of it being a leak, judge reaction and then either go with it or deny they leak as a false story, change the feature and voila!
Anyways, there is simply no way I will be purchasing this title. I'm tired of falling for all these pre-game hypes only to be bitterly disappointed. The last game I'm doing this for is Battlefield 3. The other titles will only be bought after some decent and extensive research. If you are planning to buy this though, I hope for your sake it is a success and you don't waster another R350.