Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: WW2 is doing very well, raking in the sales and scoring fairly well with critics (though players have more than a few complaints regarding the restrictive perk system in multiplayer, average campaign and whatnot). However, at some point, Sledgehammer Games didn’t want to focus on World War 2.
Speaking to Newsweek, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the studio was initially interested in a sequel for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. That was the first Call of Duty title that Sledgehammer had ever developed and released in 2014. “Sledgehammer wanted to make Advanced Warfare 2,” said Hirshberg but didn’t provide any information on what changed. Publisher pressure, perhaps?
Hirshberg did say that there was confidence in Sledgehammer to handle World War 2 in its next game. “We knew they would become historians, that they would tackle it with authenticity, give it tremendous care, and we also knew they would capture the unspeakable scale of World War 2.”
Which again is hilarious because the campaign as a whole is pretty “meh”. But hey, it earned some $500 million in revenue for the first three days of its release so clearly Activision had the right idea.