About a year ago, reports claimed that Call of Duty would be breaking its annual release cycle in 2023, and instead of a new instalment, would instead be releasing a large-scale expansion for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the series’ 2022 instalments. In the time since then, it’s become clear that that is not what Activision has planned after all. The company has confirmed that it will release a new premium Call of Duty game this year after all, with more recent reports having claimed that the Sledgehammer Games-developed title will be out in November.
Now, a new report published by journalist Jason Schreier on Bloomberg has shed further light on what to expect from this year’s instalment, corroborating a lot of recently leaked details. As per Schreier, the game will be a continuation of last year’s Modern Warfare 2, though it is unlikely to be called Modern Warfare 3. It will allegedly bring new multiplayer maps and a single player campaign that will follow-up on last year’s game, with Infinity Ward overseeing the project and Treyarch providing development support.
The report goes on to state that the shooter started development as an expansion for Modern Warfare 2, with some in Activision fearing that fatigue brought on by Call of Duty’s annual release was partly to blame for the disappointing critical and commercial performance of 2021’s Call of Duty: Vanguard. Following the success of last year’s game, however, the company decided to turn the Sledgehammer-developed expansion into a full-fledged new instalment.
The game will also allegedly carry over maps and modes from Modern Warfare 2– or that’s the current plan, at any rate. As per the report, these plans aren’t complete set in stone, and may end up changing internally between now and the game’s release.
Interestingly, the report also states that Activision was, at one point, also discussion plans of adopting a new model for the Call of Duty series that would see a new game releasing every two years, alternating between the Modern Warfare and Black Ops lines of games. However, with the company currently in the process of being acquired by Microsoft (if allowed by regulatory bodies, that is), it seems those plans have been put on the backburner.
