Sledgehammer’s third person CoD “was pretty compelling and it looked really good”, but MW3 was an “opportunity [they] couldn’t miss”

Sledgehammer Games was a studio Activision had set up especially to take the Call of Duty franchise in an all new direction. Sledgehammer had been working on a “third person action adventure game” for the CoD franchise, and they thought it was looking really good when they had the prototype done. But when they were offered the opportunity to work on Modern Warfare 3 with Infinity Ward, they just couldn’t pass it up.

“We came on board to make a third person action adventure game in the Call of Duty franchise and we were working on it for about six months,” Sledgehammer CEO Glen Schofield told GameSpot.

“We had about six to eight months on that and put a prototype together that was pretty compelling and it looked really good,” head of studio development Michael Condrey added. “[Then] we had the opportunity to work on the biggest thing in the industry with a developer in Infinity Ward that has demonstrated that they know how to do exceptional software. It was an opportunity we couldn’t miss.

“There are a lot of people on the team who have worked on Call of Duty before, on first-person shooters before, so there’s a lot of built-in knowledge about the first-person shooter genre and a lot of passionate gamers,” Condrey said. “There are guys on the floor who are on their tenth prestige in Black Ops. So it was a nice marriage of experience in the genre and sort of fan desire to work on this franchise.”

Modern Warfare 3 releases on November 8 for the Xbx 360, PS3, PC, DS and Wii. N+ will be handling the DS version, and Treyarch the Wii version.

Activision released a debut multiplayer trailer for MW3 recently. Have a look at it here.