Activision has today announced that Sledgehammer Games will be joining Infinity Ward and Treyarch in making an annual Call of Duty game, this means that each game will now have three years of development as opposed to two previously.
They revealed that Sledgehammer will be the developer of Call of Duty’s 2014 release, which means that Treyarch will be making Call of Duty 2015 with Infinity Ward developing Call of Duty 2016.
CEO of Activision Publishing Eric Hirshberg gave a few comments about the move to a three year cycle and on Sledgehammer Games:
“It will give our designers more time to envision and innovate for each title. It will give our content creators more focus on DLC and micro-DLC which … have become large and high-margin opportunities and significant engagement drivers. It will give our teams more time to polish, helping to ensure that we deliver the best possible experience to our fans each and every time.”
“They’ve demonstrated their skill on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and on their past highly rated games. They’re the perfect choice to support our new approach and bring fresh ideas and creativity to this great franchise and to raise the bar for next-gen games overall.”
I suppose this is good and bad news, it means that the Call of Duty games will be more polished and impressive with longer development time, but it also means that Activision plan to run Call of Duty into the ground by releasing a game every year. I suppose we’ll have to see how the games come out before we start judging them too harshly…
Let me know in the comments section underneath what you think about this move. Do you think it is a wise decision?
