As mentioned in this article, currently, Call of Duty 2025 (20 months from release) does not have an assigned main developer. It's my understanding that it was meant to be SHG, but following on from the 16-month development cycle of MW3, they basically refused and didn't want to…

— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) February 5, 2024

Infinity Ward are doing 2026, Sledgehammer is doing 2027.

He says he now expects 2025 to fall to Treyarch but honestly they should just have a year off then basically have a 1-year dev cycle CoD.

One thing I'm now fascinated by is the notion that, if MS has great success (profit-wise) of launching games on PS5, with Sony already admiting their business model is outdated compared to MS's, how long until Sony follows suit and releases brand new PS5 games on Series S/X?

In a couple years, PS5/NS2 players may be playing Halo and Xbox Series/NS2 users may be playing Spiderman. I would love this!

The reason MS are looking to other platforms is because of Xbox Hardware sales. If they were going to sell ~120m consoles like Sony/Nintendo this wouldn't be on the table. Sony can ignore 40-50m Xbox consoles a lot easier than Xbox can ignore 120m PlayStation consoles. So no I don't see Sony following suit. Simply because they have a lot more to lose and a lot less to gain from doing it than MS.

There's from what I can see, two Mods in this thread today, Pi-Guy and Machia, the latter is a common poster in Empire and long term Xbox fan, in addition to that, I stated earlier last week that I'm considering making G2TheUnit a co-owner of the thread if possible and see him as my future successor/already defacto in charge when I'm not around so it's not like I completely abandoned you guys.

I've already said, I wanted to take more breaks this year, at least from Gaming, for the past 5+ years I've been posting non-stop in this thread, every single day, updating it with news, all for your benefits and because I wanted to discuss gaming news with you guys, but I realise now I've been long talking about games more than I actually play them. Sometimes I'd waste hours having debates about shit I really don't care about, I don't think it's my job to handhold every user in this thread or try to bullshit them out of feeling a certain way.

For the past 2+ years I've been non-stop keeping up to date with the Russia/Ukraine situation which is more important than this thread as well but I'm getting drained and have been coming close to abandoning this thread completely over the past few months. Or at least, abandoning trying to find news for the thread, and I'm not talking about today but often has the reaction to certain things been eyerolling dooming, clickbait trash and negativity bait.

Now we come on to today, the reason I took a break recently was because of layoffs, not because of the current news, but because it was just constant negativity about the industry I love and one of my few escapes which I find pure joy in, now I can usually deal with the hyperbolic dooming and shitty attitude of gamers but the layoffs have just been depressing and I wanted break(s), I just want to have fun playing a game and then talking about a game.

What guidance am I meant to give you? Lol. I genuinely don't know what you want from me. I understand why people are upset about the current news but as for me, I'll likely keep buying the console as long as they keep making them, Game Pass exists and the IPs are timed exclusive and then I'll eventually switch to PC, I know many will not like that response, what more am I meant to say? Try to shove it down your throats that it's how everyone should feel? Lol.

I've always doubted my tenure versus Jaywood's as well, I've always partly wondered why Jaywood was so good at garnering activity to the thread compared to ours where sometimes I will end up posting 10+ comments in a row with zero responses and truth be told, that did frustrate me and I felt at times why was I bothering, am I just being used as a news bot, I want to actually talk gaming with people, then the negativity news comes and the thread gets 100+ comments.

I have no say over Xbox's business, I don't know ultimately if this will be the right or wrong decision, I've a feeling they will make more profit from this move in the long term but it may come at the cost of Xbox hardware but I've been preparing myself for that eventuality for years now, I do still expect another console for next gen but maybe not one after, ultimately, I care most about the games themselves and will go where they go (followed by Game Pass) and have cared less and less about dedicated console hardware overtime.

Nevertheless I felt guilty about abandoning the thread, I've always felt guilty about considering taking breaks, because I felt like the thread would need me, to keep the peace, to keep spirits up, to post the news, but shit I've been doing this for years and if I don't take a break then you'll definitely lose me permanently and that's exactly why I've positioned G2 as a co-owner, partly because I would feel guilt about taking a break.

We still know so little about Xbox's future plans, what titles will be multiplatform, how long they'll be exclusive, what their future hardware plans are, etc. Personally, I'd love if they made a sort of "mini-PC" box which runs a stripped back Windows OS focused solely on Gaming, finally combining the Xbox Store and Windows Store as one, making it easier for developers to port to and support, allowing me to buy a "PC" like device without having to educate myself on a bunch of PC specs, tech, etc. Microsoft does it for me and maybe even opening it up to Steam Store.

In theory yeah but the Halo community as an example Xbox + PC is way smaller than the halo community Xbox 360 days.

The Minecraft community on xbox isn't that happy either

Also in general most would not refer to you as an Xbox user but a PC user/PC gamer and you probably know yourself that a lot of Xbox console gamers in MP  did not like to play with PC gamers.  As a Fervent Gears player I was returned to the main menu countless time when some team mates saw the PC icon in the enemy team and left the game. At some point it became so bad that The Coallition turned the option to see if someone was a console player or PC player off.

In my opinion Xbox is the console that people invested in, their gamerscore their friends and so on, and why some like Klobrille and others saw a bright future, they realise now that it isn't that bright and I guess they feel devasted.  The Xbox ecosystem will probably die, MS at some point will probably stop with the hardware, gamerscore, friendslist, the games may continue but how can we be sure?  

I've often wondered why MS didnt include a dual-boot option for the xbox consoles.
Allow them to run a full windows version, that you can boot into from the console OS.
So you could swap back and forth.

That would be another "check box" for console sales.
This isnt just a console, its also a desktop pc for your kid, that needs to do x,y,z school work ect ect.

Atleast I feel like that would be another, sales argument.

They can refuse? Wtf. Lmao. Love them for that, 

They're so close...

• Treyarch in 2024 = 4 Years Since Last Entry.
• 2025 = ?
• Infinity Ward in 2026 = 4 Years Since Last Entry.
• Sledgehammer in 2027 = 4 Years Since Last Entry.

Either Sledgehammer or Treyarch are going to get screwed...

If it had to be one, it should be Treyarch, as they are huge (over 600 employees) and Sledgehammer has already been treated shitty enough, Treyarch is also the best COD developer.

Sadly...Maybe it's time to get a 4th developer on CODs rotation, at least the release schedules will be smoother and every entry will be on a 4 year schedule. I don't think they'll skip a year but 2025 is one where they could get away with it I think, Treyarch 2024 will be huge and still played in 2025, they could just release a major expansion instead for that COD, I don't think Battlefield is anytime soon either so no risk of losing any fans.

A call of duty studio refusing to make a call of duty game is crazy to me lol. Whats going on.