Activision announces Call of Duty Warzone Mobile

Activision Blizzard has chosen to officially announce Call of Duty Warzone Mobile ahead of its full unveiling next week.

An upload on the official Call of Duty YouTube channel shows a giant carrier plane flying through the clouds, before it cuts to the official logo. That trailer came with this announcement:

“Introducing Call of Duty®: Warzone™, a new Call of Duty experience being developed for mobile. Keep an eye on our new channels for more info and learn more about the game as a part of COD NEXT on September 15th at 9:30 am PT!”

Call of Duty Warzone is a free-to-play battle royale shooter available on Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series consoles. It is set in the Modern Warfare continuity, and so has storyline connections to the Call of Duty Modern Warfare games and Call of Duty Vanguard. To compete with battle royale game giants like Fortnite and PUBG, Activision enabled cross platform play across all the game’s platforms, and built modes that allow groups of as much as 150 to 200 players to enter individual games. Call of Duty Warzone has been an incredibly successful game, earning 75 million players by August 4, 2020.

While this is a major announcement, it isn’t entirely a surprise. Rumors dropped that the game was planned as far back as last year, and this March, job listings came up that confirmed that the company had started development on the title.

What is surprising is with this official announcement, Activision is effectively competing with itself. The company already has a Call of Duty Mobile, developed by TiMi Studios, a game developer under the Tencent Games umbrella and not owned by Activision. Unlike Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, Call of Duty Mobile does not have any storyline connections to any of the existing Call of Duty continuities. Call of Duty Mobile combines features, characters, and scenarios from all across the different games, and has both a battle royale mode and a Zombies mode. Notably, Call of Duty Mobile is a partnership with Tencent, who also happens to be a stockholder of Activision Blizzard. On the other hand, Call of Duty Warzone Mobile is 100 % an in-house production. While it isn’t clear how Activision went about this decision, it’s possible they have made arrangements, such as region publishing restrictions, to keep the two games from competing with each other too hard. It’s also possible Call of Duty Warzone Mobile has stringent system requirements, so that only the most high end phones and tablets and possibly Windows 11 devices can run it, to allow Activision to implement cross platform play with it and Call of Duty Warzone‘s other platforms.

Whatever the case, it won’t be long before we find out more. Activision had also already previously announced the Call of Duty NEXT event would have information about Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, at that time going by the codename Project Aurora. Alongside this will be new information on Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, and Call of Duty Warzone 2.

Source: VideoGamesChronicle