Five years after their creation, Sledgehammer Games are to finally take the lead and develop this year’s Call of Duty game. Activision have announced the franchise will move to a three year development cycle with Sledgehammer, Treyarch and Infinity Ward taking turns to produce the game.
“There are several advantages to doing this,” explained Activision Publishing president and CEO Eric Hirshberg. “This first is of course quality; this will give our designers more time to envision and to innovate for each title. Simultaneously it will give our content creators more focus on DLC and micro DLC which, as you know, have become large and high-margin opportunities, and significant engagement drivers. Finally, it’ll give our teams more time to polish, making sure that we relive the best possible experience to our fans each and every time.”
Three years ago it was rumoured that Sledgehammer were working on an sci-fi version entry to the Call of Duty franchise, but that may have been the alien inspired multiplayer portion of Call of Duty: Ghosts.
“Having the honor of developing the new, next generation of Call of Duty is a developer’s dream come true,” said Glen Schofield & Michael Condrey, Founders of Sledgehammer Games. “All of us here at Sledgehammer Games have a shared vision to create the best work of our lives. The next Call of Duty represents a new era for this amazing franchise, and we look forward to sharing what we have been working on.”
Sales of the latest CoD are down compared to previous years but has still sold by the bucketload and is placed third in this week’s charts, four months after release.
Source: CVG / Sledgehammer
Youles
“There are several advantages to doing this,” – Yeah, we now have a 1 in 3 chance of there being a good one!
None have been that good since MW1, MW2 and W@W. I would love to see it made slightly slower paced and more realistic. My biggest gripe is still the maps though, they are all “walled” so you can’t sneak about the edges of the map as much to pick people off or reach the objective, you’re nearly always forced into a CQ gun-fight. There aren’t any maps like Estate or Derailed anymore :(
Amphlett
Whilst I’m really bored of COD games (I bought and played BLOP2, my first since MW2), I can see that the series sells extremely well. “Give the people what they want” is the mantra here, and from a business point of view it works well – Well played Activision.
beeje13
I don’t know whether I’ll get back into CoD, but this is definitely a good move. Well done Acti, and good luck Sledgehammer.
Kovacs
Please stop being nice on the internet; you’re freaking the rest of us out.
;)
beeje13
Haha lol. Good news warrants good comments.
Kennykazey
Longer development means better result, but with three different studios the games could have varying quality and feel quite different… But perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
beeje13
Yes, how many times have people asked for something different from the franchise?
Personally, I jist think its a victim of its own success and has been ruined by some of the people who play it just to exploit things which probably looks good to them. That said, I was first put off by black ops one and all the bugs/connection issues.
wonkey-willy
buying call of duty is like kissing your gran goodbye!
its something you don’t want to do but out of principle you have to.
every year the powers that be churn out some dog doo and label it call of duty.
every year i say to myself no not this year son!
and blow me i go out and buy it.hate every minute of it but still play it for months.
cant work it out?
Lyts1985
Lmao, love this comment! Nice one :-D
On topic, completely agree. I gave BO2 a miss, mainly because I had other games to play, but still went out and bought Ghosts and own every other COD game… Yet I can’t say as I’ve really enjoyed a COD game since MW2. Odd.
Youles
I think there is a small part of us that just hopes we can experience a fraction of what used to make CoD so good….yet everytime I am disappointed.
Lyts1985
Youles, so very true. Everytime I pick up a COD game I say to myself “THIS will be the MW2 rival!”… And am sorely disappointed :-(
Re-release the MW series on PS4 with uprated graphics etc and non-glitched MP and I’ll be a happy boy for years to come!
Youles
Same, I’d still play MW2 now (if it weren’t hacked), and I never had these annoying lag-compensation issues.
I sunk 31 days into that multiplayer with over 100,000 kills.
I wonder…with PlayStation Now, games will be stored server-side won’t they? If that’s the case, perhaps we will one day be able to play MW2 again without it being hacked (as the hacks were due to local save files)!
beeje13
Completely agree with the idea of a release for cod4. I said this to my mates who don’t play cod anymore and they all agreed immediately that it would be a great idea.
gazzagb
This is a win-win for everyone. It’ll be great to see what Sledgehammer bring to the table, hopefully offering something new and different, while IW and Treyarch will essentially get 50% more time to develop and polish their games. That can only be seen as a good thing.
The only downside to this is I’ll have to wait until 2016 to play Ghosts 2! :(