In an attempt to either alleviate the worries of gamers concerned with the future of the franchise after the shit hit the fan at Infinity Ward’s offices yesterday, or to capitalize on all the publicity they are receiving and in effect draw attention away from the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 today (ED NOTE Purely this writer’s speculation), Activision announced its future plans for the Call of Duty franchise.
Earlier today in a statement released by Activision, the publisher outlined its “strategic plans” for the Call of Duty series, which includes the new game now in development by Treyarch which is due to come out sometime at the end of this year.
These plans also include a new game under development by Sledgehammer Games. Sledgehammer was recently formed by the leading men of the Dead Space development team, Michael Condrey and Glen A. Schofield.
The new Call of Duty game will supposedly take the series in the direction of an action-adventure game, according to the statement.
Also, Activision is “in discussions with a select number of partners to bring the franchise to Asia, one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games in the world.” This statement has been bringing up discussions of a pay-to-play online version of the Call of Duty franchise, especially after the section that states Activision’s plan is to “expand the Call of Duty brand with the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business,” such as “new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.”
As for the future of Infinity Ward, scant details are coming out. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, held a meeting with leading members of the development team earlier today. So far, no details have been released regarding what was discussed at this meeting.
According to Activision’s Call of Duty statement, Infinity Ward is still working on the two scheduled downloadable map-packs for Modern Warfare2 due to be released later this year. For the time being, Steve Pearce (Activision Publishing CTO) and Steve Ackrick (Activision Publishing Head of Production) will be the acting leaders of Infinity Ward.
via shacknews
