14 DAY TRIAL // Infinity Ward has become a development studio associated with the Call of Duty brand and the Modern Warfare series. Their collaboration with Activision goes back a lot and players are already talking about Modern Warfare 2 and its 2011 release date. But it seems that the developers themselves might actually be interested in working on something new, an original concept.
Robert Bowling, who is the community manager for Infinity Ward, told Develop in an interview that “If we do want to do something else, then we will do it. We don't feel tied to making Call of Duty games. We never worry about the future too much. Right now we wanted to make a sequel, so the entire team is hands on deck for making Modern Warfare 2.”
The company has already committed to offering some downloadable content packs for Modern Warfare 2, the first of which is set to be released during the spring of 2010, apparently exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. Apart from that, they might also need to work on an expansion for their first person shooter, especially if it fulfills its promise of breaking every sales record in the book.
Bobby Kotick, the Chief Executive Officer at Activision, has long talked about annualized releases for its biggest franchises, like Call of Duty. With Infinity Ward handling Modern Warfare 2 this year Treyarch will probably deliver a Call of Duty videogame in 2010, allowing for a year during which the path ahead can be plotted.
The people at Infinity Ward have not hinted in any way at the sort of videogame that they would like to create if they move away from shooters and from warfare. It would be really interesting to see them take on a genre they are not familiar with, like racing or real time strategy.