Activision is notorious for yearly updates to its heavy-hitting franchises. Though this strategy doesn’t always go entirely according to plan (read: Guitar Hero), the Call of Duty series is certainly far from an example of the company’s strategy gone wrong. Even so, with every year that passes it becomes more and more challenging for Activision to creatively hype the new CoD, and it appears we’ve now reached the breaking point – 2014’s Call of Duty will simply be “the best ever created.”
The quote comes via Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who revealed in tandem with Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg that Call of Duty will be abandoning its two-year-per-studio development cycle in favor of a new three-year cycle. This absolutely does not mean the game will cease to release each and every year (hahaha, as if), but rather that there will now be three studios dedicating their very existence, in three-year chunks, solely to the creation of Call of Duty. Those studios are Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and now Sledgehammer Games.
Gibing aside, it’s likely that the move will benefit Call of Duty‘s quality substantially, and hopefully rid its name of any nasty (and sometimes ignorant) pigeonholing as a yearly rehash. Activision echoed this in a statement.
For the first time, this year’s Call of Duty game, and future Call of Duty games, are being built on a three year development cycle. There are several advantages to doing this, the first is, of course, quality. This will give our designers more time to envision and to innovate.
Bringing ample innovation to Call of Duty? It’s a lovely thought, and also a scary one, as the game’s sales potential with higher review scores and more acclaim at its back is downright alarming. It’s unclear whether any game (or media property, for that matter) can ever outdo what Grand Theft Auto V did, but Activision’s news certainly adds a promising new element to the mix.
[Via: GameSpot]
