We have some interesting rumors about Sledgehammer Games’ next Call of Duty title.
The Ghost of Hope shared this statement on Twitter:
“What I am hearing about Sledgehammer Games future with Call of Duty:
Sledgehammer Games are currently slated to lead their own Call Of Duty in 2027. This comes after Infinity Ward’s game in 2026 which is presumably MW4.
COD2027 is currently NOT a Year 2 Modern Warfare game like MWIII. Unclear as of yet if it’s possibly Advanced Warfare 2 or something new. Will update whenever that becomes clear.”
This year marks the ten year anniversary of when Sledgehammer Games was elevated to become the third studio to lead development of Call of Duty games, in tandem with Infinity Ward and Treyarch.
Thus far, they have released 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, 2017’s Call of Duty: WWII, 2021’s Call of Duty: Vanguard, and last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. They may not have as good a track record critically as their peers, but Activision has clearly been satisfied in Sledgehammer fitting into their role of giving Infinity Ward and Treyarch breathing room to produce their projects.
One could argue that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s success was partly enabled by Sledgehammer Games. Since it took Treyarch and Raven Software four years to make this latest installment in the franchise, it’s definitely possible that Sledgehammer’s last two titles helped buy them time to bring it to that level of polish.
So you may not necessarily be a fan of the Sledgehammer Games-led Call of Duty games, but you can appreciate why they were placed in that position. If you want, you can take this as a hint that there’s a bigger Call of Duty project that’s scheduled to release after 2027.
And that could be the big game that will be released in the next generation of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. As we know that Nintendo is set to release their next console shortly, literally out of step with their peers, we can also see that AAA console development is already moving another step forward as well.
While some fans are hopeful that this next title could be a Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 2, we would not be holding our breath for it. Maybe Microsoft does greenlight another AAA budget for Sledgehammer to make that sequel. As we now know that future games will be produced by a committee, they will have to come up with a compelling pitch for it.