If there one thing that Activision has mastered it is knowing how to hype up their Call of Duty franchise releases. Whether it has been pairing with Eminem for an E3 concert or huge advertising budgets, each year they make the franchise bigger and bigger With just two weeks to go, Activision and Treyarch kick things up one more time with the Live Action Trailer follow up to Jonah Hill pushing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from last year.

In the “Surprise” Trailer below, there is an interesting combination of celebrity cameos combined with various gameplay mechanics to help push Call of Duty: Black Ops II. While we will let you catch the cameos on your own, we will let you know that the air strike, the tank combat mechs and even the horse all make their way into the trailer. For the first time too, the Zombie mode gets a spotlight in the trailer as well. Director Guy Ritchie brings together everyone from Hollywood A-Listers to internet sensations together for this trailer.

If you were playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, chances are you may have became a member of Call of Duty Elite. For a fee, you were able to access Call of Duty Elite and first dibs on all of the Call of Duty content drops. With Call of Duty: Black Ops II upon us in less than a month (check out the release trailer here), the question has been, “What will happen to Call of Duty Elite”? When the various SKUs were announced for Black Ops II were announced, there was no mention of Elite membership as one of the advantages to purchasing the higher end SKUs. And now, we know why.

Call of Duty Elite is coming to all Black Ops II players for free. Now before everyone who paid for the first year of Call of Duty Elite gets up in arms because they paid for membership, take notice that it isn’t the same as it was a year ago. In the video trailer below which discusses Elite’s membership benefits below, notice the one most important (and most expensive feature) is no longer included in this second season of CoD Elite. The Content Drops. When you look back at the cost of Call of Duty Elite and how it related to Modern Warfare 3, it was the content drops that made up for the charges from Elite membership.

Call of Duty Elite is a service that allows the most hardcore Call of Duty players to lose themselves in some pretty advance stat tracking and multiplayer progression. Now those gamers have even less of a reason to spend any time away from their account with the launch of the iOS app for the service.

The new app will be free for all registered users, and is available on all iOS platforms today. An android version is going to be hitting soon as well.

Immerse yourself in Call of Duty® wherever you go with the Call of Duty® ELITE mobile app. Evaluate your multiplayer progress with in-depth stat analysis. Formulate new strategies based on your recent performance and remotely incorporate edits to your loadouts. Push your changes directly into Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 so you’re always ready to play.

Check out a list of features and some screen shots after the jump.