Yesterday, we reported that the next Call of Duty title, Call of Duty Black Ops: Gulf War, is switching genres to become an open world affair. Today, we have a follow up on Activision’s Call of Duty plans for 2025.
Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson shared this information on Twitter:
“As mentioned in this article, currently, Call of Duty 2025 (20 months from release) does not have an assigned main developer. It’s my understanding that it was meant to be SHG, but following on from the 16-month development cycle of MW3, they basically refused and didn’t want to become a “year 2 support studio”.
High Moon Studios was in the running at one point (unclear if it’s still the case), which would have made it the 4th studio ever to mainline a Call of Duty game, but I believe that it’s likely going to fall to Treyarch Games in the end.
Infinity Ward is already developing Call of Duty 2026 and Sledgehammer Games recently got the greenlight to develop Call of Duty 2027, as per my previous reporting.”
As it seems, Activision continues to prioritize Call of Duty above other potential projects for the many developers they have assigned to it. We know that those studios can make interesting things outside of the Call of Duty banner, Microsoft may not be looking to change that arrangement in the near future, at least until they get a handle on the many games and studios they have under their belt now.
If they were already intervening, it would be clear that they could have made changes here already. For example, Microsoft would definitely be in a position to form an entirely new studio dedicated to Call of Duty, either with an entirely new team or built from people who are working on Call of Duty, spread around the many studios assigned to the franchise.
They could also bring other studios in to change up the formula, and between id software and MachineGames alone, we could see a lot of interesting possibilities there, while some of those support Call of Duty studios could be freed up to make a new game or two.
We have to be clear though, this isn’t particularly great news for Call of Duty 2025. It’s likely that a combination of the main studios, Sledgehammer, Treyarch, and Infinity Ward, are already working on it. But with no head studio the title may be directionless, and that may be reflected in the final product. Hopefully, Activision can sort this out before 2025 itself, otherwise we might see a repeat of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III situation just two years later.
