As he does every year, Punxsutawney Phil ventured out of his den this past weekend to once again deliver his weather forecast for the next six weeks. It’s a ritual that goes back decades, and while most people know the whole thing is just a put-on, there’s something nice about the ritual of it.
A similar sense of ritual surrounds Activision and their first financial report of the year. As they do every year, executives from the megapublisher have confirmed that a new game in the Call of Duty franchise will be released this Fall, but they didn’t have much more to say than that.
Currently codenamed Call of Duty 2020, Chief Operating Officer Coddy Johnson had this to say about the unannounced game:
So across console, PC, mobile and esports, the Call of Duty franchise has never been better positioned for growth and there is more to come, including entirely new experiences within the Modern Warfare universe, and then, of course, in Q4 of this year, a new premium Call of Duty release, which is already generating excitement in our play tests.
And Chief Financial Officer Dennis Durkin added a few words of his own:
In Q4, we plan to launch the next premium release of Call of Duty. We can’t wait to unveil what our teams have been working on, and we feel great about the content.
Though Activision is excited about the next entry in the Call of Duty franchise, there could be trouble on the horizon. It’s widely believed that Sledgehammer Games is behind Call of Duty 2020, but neither executive had anything to say on that subject. And a rumor report from last year hinted at possible problems with the development of the game, which could now be in the hands of Treyarch.
Like Punxsutawney Phil and the weather, our prognostication powers aren’t able to give a definitive answer on that rumor just yet. Hopefully we’ll learn something more concrete about Call of Duty 2020 soon… but for now, it’s nice to know that it exists.
