14 DAY TRIAL // Modern Warfare is already an established brand in itself. Infinity Ward and Activision are set to deliver the second videogame bearing the name on November 10 this year and players will no doubt line up to pick it up. The original title managed to move no less than 14 million units since it was released and it is still one of the most played multiplayer games both on consoles and on the PC.
Vince Zampella, who is the head of Infinity Ward, has given an interview to the Official PlayStation Magazine, in which he talked about a wide range of issues, amongst them about the fact that Modern Warfare was close to never being delivered to gaming.
Zampella said that “With Call of Duty 2, we were dead set against it being World War 2 but Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we'd get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game.” He added that Activision “thought working on a modern game was risky and, 'oh my god you can't do that, it's crazy!' They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time.”
The fact that Activision prefers to play it safe can be seen in its decision to actually commission in house development studio Treyarch to make a World War II game bearing the Call of Duty moniker, released after Modern Warfare. World at War was successful even if it never got close to the numbers posted by the first Modern Warfare.
It's not clear whether Treyarch is working on another World War II game bearing the Call of Duty name, but given the focus on sequels released every year and large franchises at Activision, it would surprise no one to see that both Call of Duty and the unwanted Modern Warfare will have a long life.