Rumors recently surfaced coming from an ex-Activision employee who stated that Infinity Ward, on based on the monumental success enjoyed by Call of Duty 4, were trying to force Activision's hand in renegotiating their contract so as to become the sole developers of games for the franchise. Currently development duties are handled by Treyarch in addition to Infinity Ward. The upcoming Call of Duty 5 project is a Treyarch production, as was Call of Duty 3.

Activision stated that no such talks have taken place and that the franchise, because of the short time between the launch of different games and of the varied platforms, like the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC on which it launches, needs more developers and not just one. Exclusivity with Infinity Ward has never been discussed and Infinity Ward never requested a renegotiation of the agreement they have with Activision.

The unnamed ex-Activision source also claimed that the closure of the Activision Underground studio is the direct result of the exclusivity which was to be granted to Infinity Ward, as the studio was producing a third person game based on the Call of Duty universe.

Recently, Activision has announced that Call of Duty 4 passed the nine million mark for sold copies and that it still is one of the most sold games at the moment. The recently released map pack, called the Variety Map Pack, has just gone over the 1 million mark as DLC on the Xbox 360.

Such success might be the reason for celebration at Activision and Infinity Ward, but talk of exclusivity for the development of the franchise would not prove beneficial on either side. On the one hand, Infinity Ward would have to develop a whole lot of ports for different platforms and they lack the expertise for that. On the other hand, Activision would depend on just one developer, which could lead to disastrous results for the Call of Duty franchise if one of the games goes in the series flops.