The numbers for Call of Duty are rapidly approaching ridiculous. Over 639 million hours of Modern Warfare 3 were played in 2011, and it made over a billion dollars in its first 16 days on sale. The franchise as a whole is nearing around 100 million units sold at £50 (at RRP) a pop. Ten developers have worked on it over the years: Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Raven, Gray Matter, Pi, Spark, Amaze, Rebellion, Ideaworks and creators Infinity Ward. So what next on CoD's voyage into statistical lunacy?
There are three big strands to Activision's Call of Duty strategy. There's the main game series - which after Call of Duty 2 has been subtitled Modern Warfare. There's the 'secondary' spin off series, normally made by Treyarch, and releasing in alternate years. And now there's Elite, which is a subscription-based social network overlay. Elite's function is presumably to double the revenue Call of Duty makes from each player each year, as well as allowing social network integration to further promote the games.
Oh, and to improve the pro-gamer's experience (as aside-effect of making pots of cash), by giving them slightly cheaper access to map packs and new content. When it launched alongside Modern Warfare 3, Elite was buggy, and it's taken a while for Activision to make it work. Indeed, Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, says: "We had some technological stumbles at launch, and that frustrated some of our fans. The words 'Call of Duty' plus the word 'subscription' equals 'unleash blogger hell.'"
He's even jokingly rebranded Elite's tagline as: "It's not a douche move". Still, early in February, Activision announced that Elite had seven million subscribers, of which 1.5 million had signed up for a monthly fee. Hirschberg has said that Elite v2.0 will be released alongside the next Call of Duty game (all clues point to Black Ops 2) and will have "several innovative features".
Not very dark arts
The worst-kept secret for Activision-Blizzard is Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. It hasn't announced it yet, but it's trademarked enough associated bits that it's obvious. Indeed, in mid February 2012 Amazon France put up (and quickly pulled) a page naming the game, and then Activision blacklisted websites who ran with the story before denying it would ever blacklist journalists.
"rumours of an MMO are still circulating, but there are more aborted MMOs in publishers' archives than there are any other type"
It's likely Black Ops 2 is the Call of Duty 9 game that Bobby Kotick announced to investors in November as having a 2012 release. If so, then we can safely predict an announcement either at GDC or E3, and a release date in early November 2012, where it'll find itself up against a revived Medal of Honor game. We can also predict that, given Treyarch has finally been allowed to up its team size to make Black Ops (which insiders claimed was holding their quality back for Big Red One and World At War), the game will also attempt to match the quality of the Infinity Ward products.
Finally, what can we say about the plot and setting? Treyarch have indicated it's likely to carry on the plot - which seemed to indicate (spoiler!) that Mason had assassinated JFK and Castro. Also, sound designer Collin Ayers has hinted on Twitter that the Zombies mode will be returning. Beyond that, we know very little.
While Treyarch is working on BLOPS2, both Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games arerecruiting staff for new Call of Dutys. As Activision doesn't usually follow Ubisoft in having multiple studios working on a single title, we assume they're working on separate titles. Sledgehammer's support work on MW3 came about when Infinity Ward was depopulated by the departure of Jason West and Vince Zampella, but Activision will want the studio up to full speed in time for the next gen.
Hirshberg has promised "meaningful innovation" in the next 'all-new' Call of Duty game. November 2013 would be the next deadline for Infinity Ward, and that almost certainly puts it on shelves alongside a new Xbox and Playstation - so expect a new engine and an all-new story. West and Zampella have claimed ownership of the Modern Warfare name and they'll have their game in court this year, so don't bank on Activision calling Infinity Ward's next game Modern Warfare 4, even if they win. The name may have been dragged through too much mud by late 2013 for anyone to want it.
Lost in space
Sledgehammer is a new studio formed in 2009 from EA's Visceral Games staff, who previously worked on Dead Space. The rumour mill has their new game set in space in the far future, but that was apparently abandoned when they partnered with Infinity Ward in 2010. The other rumour about the Sledgehammer game is that it's not an first-person shooter but a CoD-branded action-adventure. But with MW3 finished, they've restarted work on their own title - and there have been no reports of redundancies there, which is the usual sign of a cancelled project.
Beyond that, rumours of an MMO are still circulating, but there are more aborted MMOs in publishers' archives than there are any other type of game, so don't count on it until you're playing it. Those rumours might even be related to the free-to-play Call of Duty that Bobby Kotick announced last year. It's a play for the massive Chinese gaming market much like EA's Need for Speed World, and it's unlikely Activision will ever throw it into competition with their western games.
CoD is expanding on five fronts - Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Elite and free-to-play - and doesn't look like doing a Guitar Hero any time soon. Try as they might, Activision can't quite run this one into the ground. Chances are you'll be called to duty for a long time yet.
Respawn: What's happening with West and Zampella's new outfit?
On top of these main titles, there's Respawn Entertainment, formed from the 40 employees who quit Infinity Ward (which amounts to around half the studio) after founders Jason West and Vince Zampella sued Activision over unpaid royalties and were fired for insubordination.
If they win their court case, starting on May 7 2012, they will own the rights to Modern Warfare - at which point, the future of Activision outside of Blizzard could be up in the air. Meanwhile, they're making their own game, widely expected to be a science-fiction shooter. Their first screenshot (above) hardly makes anything clearer, however.
It's now been two years since Respawn was founded and, despite staff being seen wandering around E3 in Respawn T-shirts, nothing has been announced. What we do know is that they're working with at least one impressive name: Iain McCaig, an extremely talented artist who's headed up design on the new Star Wars, Harry Potter and John Carter movies, as well as supplying the original Fighting Fantasy covers.
EA have also let slip a few details. A leaked and apparently genuine internal release schedule says the game should be releasing in March 2013, which means (if we're going on traditional games marketing schedules) the first reveal will be very soon - probably at E3 this year.
EA Games head Frank Gibeau has said the aim for EA is to avoid clashing with either the next Battlefield or the new Medal of Honor, so they'll be looking to release it outside the traditional November pre-Christmas slot. He also let slip that the game will be a sci-fi shooter - squint carefully at the two extremely blurred images released so far and you can see... nothing at all about that.
Still, the news should infuriate the rump of Infinity Ward as well, if they're working on a similar game for a November release...
