14 DAY TRIAL // Activision Blizzard announced, in a very surprising move, that developer Sledgehammer Games was selected to create the 2011 installment of the Call of Duty franchise, which will probably also bear the Modern Warfare 3 moniker. The publisher also cleared the air a bit, confirming that both Vince Zampella, the Chief Executive Officer, and Jason West, the president and co-founder, left developer Infinity Ward.
The company is also revealing that Infinity Ward itself is still working on map packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which are set to be released later in 2010. It's not clear whether there are any other projects that the developer will then move on to - the much talked about new intellectual property they are preparing since 2008 - or whether Activision plans to gut them as it recently did with RedOctane and with Neversoft.
The Call of Duty franchise will receive a new game this year, in time for Christmas, made by Treyarch, the studio also responsible for World at War. The title is rumored to move from a World War II setting to Vietnam, although Activision has not offered any clear details until now. The Sledgehammer-made game coming in 2011 might also suffer a change of setting.
Sledgehammer Games is being headed by Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey, who worked as executive producer and as senior development director on the Dead Space project over at Electronic Arts. Let's hope that the pair does not try to make Call of Duty a third person perspective videogame.
Mike Griffith, who is the president of Activision Publishing, put out a statement, which reads, “2010 will be another important year for the Call of Duty franchise. In addition to continued catalog sales, new downloadable content from Infinity Ward and a new Call of Duty release, we are excited about the opportunity to bring the franchise to new geographies, genres and players.”