14 DAY TRIAL // Sledgehammer Games has started hiring developers for its future Call of Duty title, according to a recent job listing on Gamasutra. The post states, among other things, that Sledgehammer is “actively recruiting top talent for our Call of Duty First Person Shooter development team. If you have a desire to work on the most successful FPS franchise in the history of video games, apply online. We’re always looking for great people.”
The developer's take on the Call of Duty franchise will be a first-person action adventure game that has the aim of broadening the audience of the series and bringing new players in. No other information is available about this new installment as of yet. Call of Duty is already Activision’s most profitable multi-platform franchise, with Modern Warfare 2’s launch being the biggest in video-game history and the recent success of the Stimulus Package map DLC.
Sledgehammer Games was formed by ex-EA developers Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. The two left Visceral Games, an Electronic Arts subsidiary, after the release of Dead Space and formed this new studio to focus on action-adventure titles. Since its inception, the studio hired a team consisting of figures that played major roles in the creation of games like Tomb Raider, Ratchet and Clank, Afro Samurai or Resistance: Fall of Man.
It may be worth remembering that Activision recently fired the two heads of Infinity Ward, the studio that created the Call of Duty franchise and that developed the aforementioned Modern Warfare 2. After this unfortunate event, many important people from Infinity Ward joined the two ex-Activision employees to form Respawn Entertainment. This new outfit entered, perhaps ironically, in the Electronic Arts Partners programs, which will have EA distribute its game, but will let it retain control over its intellectual properties.