They are not as good as IW, that's not a bad thing, they are very good at what they do, I really doubt they want to leave since they are making money where they are at.

Who was responsible for the direction that Call of Duty 3 went in? If it was Treyarch, then maybe it would be best they go off on their own, and end up crashing and burning.

I don't think there's any evidence that freedom is going to mean success for Treyarch, even within Activision. They have a lengthy history of just taking the reins of established brands and franchises, and just doing more of the same. Many of their games I feel are boring in design and sloppy in execution. I mean really, what from that list is evidence that there is some hidden gem in Treyarch? Max Steel, Draconus, Spiderman, baseball, James Bond?

I'm sure Treyarch are happy where they're at.

I'm sure plenty of other developers would jump at the chance of developing a Call of Duty title every 2 years so they could have some of that profit in their own pockets.

There are other game developers/publishers out there spending more on developing games and getting fuck all in comparison back.

In short: Treyarch are financially well-off forever as long as they keep making Call of Duty games. Why in the world would you give that up just to "come out of infinity ward's shadow".

In my opinion I think their Call of Duty games suck in comparison to Infinity Wards. I loved COD2, COD3 was meh, COD4 was Awesome, Skipped World at War because it's Treyarch and had already learnt from COD3 and then bought MW2 on day one and it's fab.

Treyarch COD games are alright but they don't warrent a £35+ purchase in my opinion. The games are always full price because Activison are greedy and then always outdated within one year because the next installment is released. That is when the price starts falling.

Dont be so foolish! There games sell well!

LOL

As Onyxmeth said, they seem to be somewhat lacking in the creativity department, even if they are a dev that does good, hard work otherwise. Independence would be difficult for them

Though i could see them doing a High Voltage Studios thing, slowly trying to get away from their more menial duties and break out into more creative freedom.

As we learned from High Voltage, there was a lack of creativity and artistic direction in The Conduit, based on the testimonials of the fine folks over in the Nintendo Discussion. If that's what we can expect from Treyarch if they're given freedom to branch out, they're probably just better off being handed the blueprints and asked to merely execute properly. The only defining factor I see in Treyarch is that they are good at resource and time management, nothing more. Doesn't it say it all that after COD went into Modern Warfare that Treyarch went backwards to tread the same ground they've done over and over already?

They can't release generic, derivative crap without Activision.

It would be nice to think that they'd get a bit more originality from becoming standalone developers. But SOMEBODY would have to publish their games, right?

I think other way around, Treyarch should stay with Activision doing they're bi-yearly Cod games and

Infinity Ward should leave Activision and make a new IP. With the way Treyarch is tarnishing the Cod name with their shitty games, IW would be better off doing a series that they own and only they develop.

They call CoD 6 Modern Warfare 2, no CoD involved, but people are still playing CoD, not Modern Warfare 2