Report: Call of Duty annual publication wobbles, but Treyarch pledges to save it



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The production of Call of Duty is in trouble, but the franchise will still come out for the sixteenth edition in 2020, according to another very comprehensive report from Kotaku on what's happening inside Activision's studios.

Jason Schreier's report explains how even a three-year timeline is a very tight timeframe for building something of the Call of Duty scale, and lets the reader realize how much the annual series of this series is without previous and if it is almost considered acquired today. Call of Duty publishes a game every year since 2005, each year from the previous two generations of the console. During this period, it has often been the best-selling game in those years and has become a cultural phenomenon, especially since 2007. Modern war.

But, says Kotaku, the Call of Duty 2020 game will be run by Treyarch, as the collaboration between Sledgehammer Games and long-time support studio Raven Software – now being given a leadership role – has not been satisfactory. . This means that Treyarch is in charge of delivering a Black Ops game two years after 2018. Black Ops 4, with Sledgehammer and Raven in support. Schreier has talked with developers worried about the type of overtime that this could involve (especially since this game should bridge the gap between two generations of consoles, if the next one is launched in 2020). Others at Treyarch were more optimistic, saying that they already had a solid design capable of handling the accelerated schedule.

The founder of the series, Infinity Ward, is behind this year's unseen Call of Duty, which is almost certainly the next Modern Warfare. It is about the time of year when Activision made an important announcement, before the E3, of the rest of the series. Sledgehammer is the youngest arm of a spin that has produced a Call of Duty each year over the last two generations of consoles.

Sledgehammer supported Infinity Ward for the 2011 season Modern War 3, last publication of a subset of Call of Duty published with two years of rest. Sledgehammer had Call of Duty: Advanced War on its own for 2014, so welcomed Call of Duty: World War II in 2017. Apparently, this is not the main studio of the 2020 game. This has caused tensions between his staff and that of Raven Software, reported Schreier. Raven is one of Activision's oldest in-house studios, but it's essentially a support operation over the last decade, recently taking the lead of Activision's group exclusively in China. Call of Duty Online.

Kotaku's report points out that there is really nothing like the certainty of launching and charging a Call of Duty launch every November. Sports video games do not really matter, because it's very iterative, although the developers of EA Sports, 2K Sports, Konami and Sony San Diego also have something to say about fast schedules .

Electronic Arts attempted to create something similar with its Battlefield and Medal of Honor series from 2010 to 2018, but two disappointing Medal of Honor entries canceled this series and Battlefield's odd incursion into the crime drama. Battlefield Hardline, has been delayed from 2014 to 2015. Otherwise, the only thing that comes close to what Activision has achieved since the second inauguration of George W. Bush would be something like Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series. From 2009 to 2015, it was released every year on PC and on consoles (and even doubled in 2012 and 2014 with separate titles for PS Vita and Xbox 360).

That ended in 2016, after a thorny crisis Assassin's Creed Unity (2014) and lukewarm response to Union (2015) led Ubisoft to "roll back and re-examine" the franchise. There will be no assassin's Creed for 2019 either, but the series is doing much better after two strong launches with origin and Odyssey. A third Watch Dogs, although not officially announced, could take its place this year, as its predecessor did for Assassin's Creed in 2016. We will probably know in a few weeks.

Activision seems determined to take this annual step, and esport may be one of the main reasons. The Call of Duty World League started in 2016 and its seasons all started within two months of the launch of the current game. This is a big part of the league's attractiveness and visibility and, of course, the league provides a promotional advantage to the brand at large.

Activision Blizzard owns this league and announced earlier this month the top five cities listed in another franchise-based Call of Duty league. According to ESPN, Activision had requested up to $ 25 million per team to those seeking to participate.

In addition, Kotaku said that Black Ops 4 did not present the kind of revenue stream that Activision had hoped for. In February, Activision lowered its sales forecast for the 2019 Call of Duty, although it said at the time that Black Ops 4Initial sales were strong. Anyway, Kotaku said the leaders were considering a free component for this year's Call of Duty. Leaders said in February that a campaign would be organized and Kotaku announced yesterday that Call of Duty 2020 would also do so.

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