You'd Better Call (Of Duty) The Sledgehammer (Games)
CoD switches to three-year cycle
Call of Duty has long shared development duties between multiple studios. Most obviously, it's operated under a two-year schedule, with series creators' Infinity Ward and Treyarch taking it in turns to work out which national monuments to make fall over. You might be less aware of the other studios who pitch in each year, including Raven Software, Nerversoft and Sledgehammer Games.
As reported by IGN, an Activision investor call mentioned that Sledgehammer are now working on a Call of Duty all of their own. That was already known, but it makes it official that Call of Duty is switching to a three-year development cycle.
The quote in the IGN story isn't credited to any particular individual, but the amorphous corporate entity known as Activision apparently said that, "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."
Maybe one national monument could fall down and, like, crash into another national monument? I don't know if that's possible though. I imagine Call of Duty's developers have dispatched their top people to Netflix, to check whether Roland Emmerich has any new movies out.
In seriousness, I find occasional enjoyment within the narrow corridors of Call of Duty's loud, jingoistic first-person shooting. Having three years to make each entry seems like a good idea, especially given the series' recent stagnation and worse.
It's expected that Treyarch's game will hit in 2015, with Infinity Ward's to follow in 2016. By 2020, there'll be only a few game studios left who aren't trapped within the eternally swirling vortex of burnt-out cars and LZ-defence missions that encompasses Call of Duty game development.
Hey! An eternally swirling vortex. Now there's an idea for a Call of Duty mission.