Following the rumored allegations of “insubordination” and “breaches of conduct” by the departing co-founders of Infinity Ward, Activison has announced its plans for the future of the Call of Duty franchise.
From what’s already known, this year’s Call of Duty is being helmed by Call of Duty 3 and World at War veterans, Treyarch and not to much surprise, 2011 will also see the release of another Call of Duty video game. However, the series will be extending into the “action-adventure” genre that is being crafted by the newly formed Sledgehammer Games – headed by ex-Visceral developers Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey – that is also expected for release in 2011.
Activison has somewhat addressed the future of the franchise which includes putting the Call of Duty name under a singular business unit, intending to follow the model established by Blizzard Entertainment for their own intellectual properties. Keeping in line with this, the company has announced plans to bring Call of Duty to “new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.” This is not a surprise given the fact that Activison has publicly stated plans for a subscription based Call of Duty and talks with partners of entering the Asian market, where its one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games, is an example of their efforts.
As for Infinity Ward, Activison has stated that the developer remains “central to Call of Duty’s future.” IW is still in development for the first two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2 and has stated that Steve Pearce (Activision Publishing CTO) and Steve Ackrick (Activison Publishing Head of Production) have temporarily taken charge of the studio.
