Activision has been promoting their “Three-Year Cycle” for new entries in the Call of Duty franchise for close to a decade now, but it looks like that roadmap has hit a bit of a snag heading into 2020.
With Call of Duty 2019 currently in development at Infinity Ward, it was assumed that Sledgehammer Games would take the reins on next year’s title. But if a new report on Kotaku is to be believed, Activision has decided to transfer 2020’s entry to Treyarch, who will take the skeleton of its standalone story (which would have been set during the Cold War) and rejigger it into Call of Duty: Black Ops 5.
According to the site’s Jason Schreier, the trouble began when “Call of Duty 2020” was designated as a co-production between Sledgehammer and Raven Studios. The two studios were unable to work together, and development stalled. But rather than take 2020 off, the publisher is pushing Treyarch up in the rotation to produce Black Ops 5:
For 2020, Activision had originally switched things up, assigning the Wisconsin-based support studio Raven to take a leadership role alongside Sledgehammer to make a Call of Duty game set during the Cold War (likely involving Vietnam). As of very recently, that’s changed. Now Treyarch, based in Santa Monica, California, is in charge of leading Call of Duty: Black Ops 5 for 2020.
According to those briefed on the overhaul, Treyarch will take creative leadership on this new Black Ops while Raven and Sledgehammer will serve as support studios for the game, transforming the work they’ve done on their own single-player story mode into a campaign for Black Ops 5, which will also be set during the Cold War.
Activision declined to comment on the report, as they’re busy preparing to unveil Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 2019 (widely expected to be Modern Warfare 4) sometime in the next few weeks.
