The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 on PS4 and PS5 was a great hit for Activision, and according to chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl, it taught the company that it can lean more on nostalgia. In an interview with The Game Business, he spoke about the re-release of the 2010 and 2012 shooters, and how while the company expected them to do well, both titles surpassed these expectations.
“We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends. The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well; we didn’t think they would do that well. But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun. MW4 does that.”
Bahl went on to note that the PS4 and PS5 ports of the PS3/Xbox 360-era games taught Activision a lot of things that the company will go on to apply to not only potential re-releases, but also “future games”.
In the same interview, he has also revealed that the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 – slated for release on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on October 23rd – will wrap up the story threads that have been left dangling ever since the Modern Warfare series got rebooted in 2019. Along with this, Activision already set up a team to work on a brand-new sub-franchise for Call of Duty.
“I don’t want to give any spoilers, but [Modern Warfare 4] is going to be the epic conclusion of this recent series of Modern Warfare. It’s not that some characters and pieces can’t live on beyond this and be reinvented. But we’re excited by closing this chapter and launching a new one.
“Where we go with future games, we have to innovate. What we heard from the audience is they want new or better or different. The landscape is changing right under our feet. You’re seeing new games being built overnight, and you’re seeing tastes change and how people want to play.”
As for how far along this new sub-franchise is, Bahl noted that “we’ve already laid the groundwork.” However, the company isn’t quite ready to talk about it just yet, and wants to instead focus its efforts on Modern Warfare 4.
“It was not something that our community was looking for,” he said on the subject of Modern Warfare 3’s poor reception. “They wanted something fresh, and even though there were different time settings and ways to play the game with new features, that tonal shift is something that they were looking for.”
“So, we’ve already stated that a future title is going to be a new sub-franchise, and we’ve already laid the groundwork. But we’re really excited about Modern Warfare 4, and that addresses some of that feedback.”
While Bahl hasn’t revealed any details about which of the Activision studios is working on this new sub-franchise, Sledgehammer Games seems to be the most probable since the studio’s last title was 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, which has given it plenty of time to work on a new game.
