Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III seems to have been a major effort taking seven of Activision’s studios to work on, but we may already know the reason for that.
Tech4Gamers reported that a total of 7 studios were brought together to produce this game. The expected big three studios are here, in Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, and Infinity Ward. They are joined by four of the many support studios Activision has assigned to the release.
Those four studios are Beenox, Raven Software, High Moon Studios, and Demonware. You may recognize the first three of these four studios as the makers of some of the most popular and critically acclaimed non-Call of Duty related games Activision has even published. For example, High Moon Studios worked closely with Hasbro to make the Transformers: War for Cybertron games, that Hasbro now wants to see get a rerelease, on Game Pass to boot.
So, the discourse over how Activision has acquired several talented studios only to make them Call of Duty support studios isn’t new at all. We know they could be making more than Call of Duty games, and Activision has chosen to dedicate those talents to only one game.
For those curious, Demonware doesn’t make video games. They’re actually a middleware developer, specializing in middleware to enable online features.
In the case of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Activision may have had good reason to pool together seven studios, including the three big ones, onto this one project. That reason being that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is rumored to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II content, that Activision decided to spin off into its own game.
Why the rush? That’s because Microsoft and Activision hadn’t safely completed their merger acquisition agreement. The deal coincided with the end of Activision’s current contract for Call of Duty. They had to round up a game for this year that would safely hit this holiday, and also allow them a clean break from Sony, just in case.
Our source believes that these many studios means a lot of content. We put forward the idea that these studios were brought together just to make sure the game got finished, at an acceptable state, and on time. Hopefully, they are able to meet just that goal.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be released on November 10, 2023. No platforms have been announced yet, but it’s likely to once again appear on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows on Battle.net and Steam. The verdict is still out if it will also arrive on the Nintendo Switch. A reveal event is scheduled for this August 17, 2023.
