We have some interesting new details about what Microsoft plans for Call of Duty’s future.
Call of Duty player TheGhostOfHope decided to share this on Twitter today:
“What I am being told about the future of Call of Duty:
Microsoft has set up a new committee under Activision for Call of Duty that will control “features” & “systems” at the franchise level and let the studios make suggestions.
So, whether something like Omnimovement which is new to the franchise survives past this year will be decided not by Infinity Ward or Treyarch but by this committee.
Studios are being told not to innovate in areas like UI, Prestige, certain gameplay features etc. but rather to focus on innovating on maps, modes, storytelling as that is where they want the creativity to come from.”
TheGhostOfHope added this detail in response to someone else’s tweet:
“They are going to continue bringing the UI closer and closer to the old games from what I know.”
If you were Call of Duty hater, you may have thought that this would have been an opportunity to attack the franchise, and Activision or Microsoft. But this is the sort of thing that the players would actually like to see.
While Call of Duty is an annualized franchise in the same way that sports games from EA and 2K Sports are annualized, the developers don’t quite produce them in a way that’s uniform or standardized.
One could argue that Ubisoft has also sometimes endeavored to do the same with their Assassin’s Creed games, and they continued to experiment with new ideas year on year. If you do play those Assassin’s Creed games, you would know that that has often come at the expense of those games.
Is it bad to try to be innovative? Not necessarily. But in the case of Call of Duty, the developers have to consider what their fans are looking for as well. And their fans include a casual but dedicated community, who always show up for the holidays, and there’s also a dedicated esports component.
If you compare these to other games in similar situations, the players are looking for some degree of uniformity or standardization. Fortnite doesn’t change as much as Call of Duty does.
On the esports side, fighting game developers dedicate a good five years to their games, so that professional players feel that learning a game as complex as Tekken 8 is worthwhile. And that’s the same deal for sim racing esports.
We suspect going back to the old UI will be the most welcome change. Of course, all of these are also subject to change in the future, but it looks like Microsoft knows a little bit about what they’re doing with this franchise, and with Activision.
