Massive Changes Coming To The Call Of Duty Franchise

Incase you missed last nights Infinity Ward and Activision situation, I'll re-cap everything real quick.
The two co-founders of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, have left the popular game studio due to "creative disagreements" with their publish Activision. Later last night, Activision filled their 10-k where in they talked about investigating charges of "insubordination." Here's a direct quote from Activision's annual report put out last night:

"The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company."




 Now that everything has been cleared up, at least a little, Activision made a couple announcements regarding their popular Call of Duty franchise.


*Treyarch is developing a Call of Duty game for release this Fall
*Infinity Ward is currently working on the "first two" DLC map packs for Modern Warefare 2
*Sledgehammer games, the Activision-owned studio started by Glen A. Schofield and Michael Conrey--both formerly of EA's studio, Visceral Games--is working on a Call of Duty game scheduled for release in 2011. The game is going to "extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre".

Lastly Activision stated that they are forming a new business unit around the Call of Duty franchise to combine resources and bring to Call of Duty "the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit".
Its been pretty widly known for a couple of years that Activision specializes in making sequels for their franchies. This however, brings the Call of Duty franchise to a whole new level. I won't be surprised if Call of Duty starts to get the "Guitar Hero treatment" anytime soon.

Call of Duty 7: Holiday 2010 Release

Activision Blizzard confirmed today during an inventors call that they will in fact"continue annualized" the Call of Duty franchise. This shouldn't come to a huge surprise to anyone seeing how Activision has treated the Call of Duty franchise over the past years. What is interesting however, is what CEO Bobby Kotick had to say during the call:

"If you think about the successes we have had in other categories on subscriptions, you can get a sense of the direction we want to take that franchise".

Judging by Kotick's remark, and his overall business plan, I won't besurprised if the next Call of Duty game is going to offer a subscription service of some type.

While Activision Blizzard brass did not name the developer of the next major Call of Duty game, developer Treyarch has been linked to the upcoming title due to one of their animator's LinkedIn profile mentioning Call of Duty: 7