Call of Duty’s Three Year Dev Cycle Allows for New Mechanics, Approaches in Games – Activision

Sledgehammer Games has been hogging headlines aplenty since revealing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but before the first trailer hit, Activision had revealed that there would now be three years of development for each series iteration in rotation. According to Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg in Game Informer’s June issue, this allows the developers to try new things and not race to the finish line as with previous games.

“Moving to a three-year cycle allows the teams a couple of things. First of all, it gives them the freedom to fail in the creative process. It allows there to be things that don’t make it onto the disc. In a two-year process, every single line of code is like a race to the submission. We want to be able to try new things, try new core mechanics, and try new approaches within the game.”

It certainly shows, as Advanced Warfare looks far more compelling than Call of Duty: Ghosts. Will it raise the standard for the series though? We’ll find out when it launches on November 4th.

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