14 DAY TRIAL // Vivendi, the company controlling Activision, has said that the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the new first person shooter developed by Treyarch, shows that the studio is able to create complex gaming experiences which can compete with the best products coming out of the studio Infinity Ward.
Jean-Bernard Levy, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Vivendi, the parent company of Activision Blizzard, has said at the Morgan Stanley TMT in Barcelona, Spain, that, “The Treyarch studio, which made this year’s game, has done better than what Infinity Ward could achieve a year ago”.
He added, “We have reconstructed Infinity Ward, we are very happy with the way we have been able to reconstruct it”, which suggests that next year's Call of Duty game might be handled by the studio.
Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, also sought to play up the role the publisher had in the development process, saying, “The number of people playing online and the number of hours they are playing demonstrates how online gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment and certainly validates Activision Blizzard’s leadership role in online entertainment.”
Earlier in the year both co founder, Jason West and Vincent Zampella, left the company because of issues over the ownership of the Modern Warfare brand and payment problems, and formed a new development studio which will work with Electronic Arts.
Respawn has managed to attract a number of developers who worked at Infinity Ward but Activision maintains that the studio is now fully staffed and ready to create new gaming experiences.
Activision has confirmed that a new Call of Duty video game is set to be released during the second half of 2011 but the publisher has not said which studio will work on the game or what genre it will embrace.
Black Ops will be the biggest video game launch of the year, with more than 5 million copies moved in one day.