It’s no secret that Infinity Ward are working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the next entry in this long running series, and according to a new online rumour, it’s going to be a prequel to their super hit 2007 title, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

An ‘unnamed source’ told this to the site thisisxbox.com. This is the very same source that revealed Black Ops’ name and a lot of other info a year ago.

The source says the story will focus on the famous character from Modern Warfare 2, Ghost, and explain how he becomes one of the cool-looking masked soldiers in Task Force 141.

The source also says that the game will also have players revisiting locations from Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 from a different perspective. Also, the game will not be developed on a new engine. One last and staggering report- Modern Warfare 3 will not, after all, be released this year.

Although it has been rumoured several times before, sometimes by IW workers themselves, that the game will hit the shelves this year, the source says otherwise. Does this mean that the Call of Duty franchise will take a much needed break this year? Or maybe Sledgehammer will be filling in the shoes this season?

Stay tuned, we will let you know as soon as we get our hands on the news.

Sledgehammer is headed by Geln Schofield and Michael Condrey, who were originally part of EA’s Visceral Games. They left Visceral after the development of Dead Space to make the next CoD game for Activision.

But it seems Schofield has made up his mind to make his upcoming project bigger and better than his previous game, Dead Space. He says, “Picking composers 4 the game. Fun stuff, think we found a great fit. Audio will b better than what we did on Dead Space.”

A turckload of Call of Duty games are to be released in the next few months. Apart from the upcoming Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, 2011 will be seeing the release of Sledgehammers FPS adventure spin-off CoD title, while Infinity Ward’s ‘true CoD sequel’ will be releasing later next year.

Keep watching this space for more hot news on Call of Duty games.