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Activision confirms that Call of Duty 2020 will be released this Fall
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.
Posted in News
Tagged Call of Duty 2020
Rumor: Cold War-centered Call of Duty 2020 scrapped in favor of Black Op 5
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.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty 2020