Activision Announce Plans for Call of Duty Franchise, Infinity Ward Out, New Devs In

[Maximus]

Publisher Activision announced today new "strategic plans" for the Call of Duty franchise, announcing a new developer for the shooter franchise and confirming the departure of key Infinity Ward staffers.

The plans include the formation of a dedicated business unit that will bring together its various new brand initiatives with focused, dedicated resources around the world. The company intends to expand the Call of Duty brand with the same focus seen in its Blizzard® Entertainment business unit. This will include a focus on high-margin digital online content and further the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.

"2010 will be another important year for the Call of Duty franchise," stated Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing. "In addition to continued catalog sales, new downloadable content from Infinity Ward and a new Call of Duty release, we are excited about the opportunity to bring the franchise to new geographies, genres and players."

The company expects to release a new Call of Duty game from Treyarch this fall. In addition, Infinity Ward is in development on the first two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare® 2 for release in 2010.

The company is also for the first time announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre. Sledgehammer is helmed by industry veterans Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey. Prior to joining Activision Publishing, Schofield was the Executive Producer of the award-winning game, Dead Space and Michael Condrey was the Sr. Development Director on the game. The Dead Space franchise has won more than 80 industry awards worldwide including the prestigious A.I.A.S. Action Game of the Year and two B.A.F.T.A.S.

The Call of Duty business unit will be led by Philip Earl, who currently runs Activision Publishing's Asia Pacific region and previously served in senior executive positions with Procter & Gamble and Nestle. Activision Publishing veterans Steve Pearce, chief technology officer and Steve Ackrich, head of production, will lead Infinity Ward on an interim basis. Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward.

Lastly, Activision Publishing announced that the company is in discussions with a select number of partners to bring the franchise to Asia, one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games in the world.

http://kotaku.com/5484026/

The tl;dr version, IW didn't want to make MW3, Activision tried to force the issue, IW told them where to go. Activision fired the two top staffers and brought in a new developer. It is expected that the rest of the core IW staff will follow West and Zampella out and form a new development studio independent of any single publisher (like Epic) able to make deals with anyone rather than being tied to one publisher.

[Septimus Prime]

Watch, in the future, MW2 will still be outselling the new CoD games.

[aphex]

Sony buy new dev studio plz

[jamclaur]

Yeah, because the main guy in charge was fired today for confidentiality breach.

[Bizdady]

COD going the Socom route??

[Icemage]

Thanks for giving me another reason to never support you again, Activision. Do you really hate money that much?

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by jamclaur

Yeah, because the main guy in charge was fired today for confidentiality breach.

It was different to that. I can't give details, but it's a lot different to that, Activision are in full damage control.

[Simplayer]

Soooo....World of Duty in '12? I'd imagine they'd want a new product in the franchise every year.

[toef]

I know this is a different situation, but I wonder how it will compare to the Guitar Hero/Harmonix split.

Obviously Activision owns the Call of Duty name, and I imagine also the Modern Warfare "sub-series" (whatever you want to call it).

So despite Infinity Ward going bye-bye, there'll still be a Modern Warfare 3, just not by Infinity Ward.

But look at how uninformed people were about Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band.

Lots of people thought Rock Band was just a rip-off of Guitar Hero, and had no idea that the people that made GH 1 & 2 were the ones behind RB.

Obviously people that follow games fairly closely are aware of what's going on, but the more casual gamers, and the parents of younger gamers, have no idea. They'll probably go out and buy MW3 when it comes out, with no idea of what's really going on, or who is behind it.

People will be further confused/oblivious, if the Infinity Ward name also belongs to Activision (so essentially, Infinity Ward will still make MW3, it'll just be different employees working at IW).

[RatedRstar]

The company is also for the first time announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre. Sledgehammer is helmed by industry veterans Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey.

The guys at 2015 break off from EA in 2003 to form InfinityWard and a new IP. 7 years later there replaced by a bunch of guys doing the same damn thing. Ironic? What will be the icing on the cake is if West and Zampella form a new studio and go back to EA. Completing the circle.

By the way, Activision you get........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67oEAVNMSQQ

[cajmoyper]

Weren't the devs pretty xbox-favored? Is this going to be a bad thing for PS3 owners when whatever MW3 will be called, comes out?

[aphex]

Originally Posted by cajmoyper

Weren't the devs pretty xbox-favored? Is this going to be a bad thing for PS3 owners when whatever MW3 will be called, comes out?

Not if the game sucks ass..

[funnymanbing]

Originally Posted by aphex

Sony buy new dev studio plz

This.

[molson1138]

Stupid move by Activision IMO, but can't say I'm surprised. With all the weirdness around the name before it came out something wasn't right between Activision and IW.

[nathanp]

So what this pretty much means is that CoDMW2 will be the last good Call of Duty we're ever likely to see. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

[cajmoyper]

Originally Posted by aphex

Not if the game sucks ass..

Thanks, that answered my question...

[RatedRstar]

I'm perfectly fine playing Cod games by a different developer. I like World at War better then Modern Warfare 2.

But I don't like how Activision is treating all their developers. It seems from day 1, Bobby Kotick's plan was to remove all creative freedom.

[KilloWertz]

Since Call of Duty games have been historically worse when they aren't developed by Infinity Ward, my interest in the series will pretty much be gone from this point on. There's nothing wrong with liking World at War, as it was a quality game, but that's mainly because Treyarch pretty much copied a lot of what Infinity Ward did with Call of Duty 4 (right down to the menus). My interest in the series started to dwindle after Modern Warfare 2 came out anyways, so Infinity Ward being freed from Call of Duty, and likely Activision, could all end up being a blessing.

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by cajmoyper

Weren't the devs pretty xbox-favored? Is this going to be a bad thing for PS3 owners when whatever MW3 will be called, comes out?

I've seen no sign that Infinity Ward was Xbox favored.

It was Activision who was always Xbox-favored.

This could, in fact, be a good thing. Maybe the new IW core will actually give the PS3 a little more attention than Activision ever did.

[AranhaHunter]

No IW = COD franchise is meh to me.