The holiday season is already getting started and for gamers this means that a lot of eagerly anticipated titles are beginning to appear on store shelves, along with questions as to what title should be the first one bought. Call of Duty: World At War developer Treyarch also pondered a bit on this and it reached the conclusion that its title would definitely be the one that customers would buy.

Noah Heller, senior producer at Activision, the parent company of Treyarch, recently spoke with MCV and revealed that, although the competition in the shooter genre was very tough this year, with the likes of Resistance 2, Gears of War 2 or Far Cry 2 battling for the top position, people were really going to be interested in Call of Duty.

"There’s a lot of competition this year, but I feel very strongly we have the best shooter this Christmas," he explained. "There is a lot of people new to the Call of Duty franchise following COD4, and they won’t be disappointed. I’m looking forward to Gears of War, Far Cry and Resistance 2, and I’m sure they will be great games, but I am confident the consumer will come back to Call of Duty."

Well one thing's for sure; the developers and publishers are very optimistic about this game and are sure that it will be a worthy follow-up to last year's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is still one of the most popular and most played games on the platforms it was launched for. Heller also went on to say that Treyarch created a game according to the studio's style and did not focus on recreating CoD 4 in a World War II setting.

"Along with the ‘why are you returning to WWII?’ questions, we’ve been asked ‘how are you possibly going to follow up COD4?’ And the answer to that question was not to focus on the previous game, But to make our own game on our own merits and our own strengths, and show people what we can do."

It's really nice to hear that developers are confident about their games, but only time and customers will reveal how the holiday shooters are going to sell this season.