It’s one of the most immutable traditions of video games: at the end of each year since 2005, a new Call of Duty hits the market and makes its mark on the charts in the United States. If Activision has already confirmed the release of the next Modern Warfare for this year 2022, the next exercise promises to be historic, because the Treyarch game which was to be released in 2023 will not finally arrive until 2024, offering developers an additional year.
According to information from Jason Schreier, the disappointing sales of Call of Duty: Vanguard are among the factors that have prompted the pundits of Activision to review their agenda, some believing that the releases are now linked a little too quickly. It must be said that the work on the franchise has become colossal since the release of Call of Duty: Warzone in 2020, to the point that all Activision studios are working in one way or another on the franchise. Microsoft, which has announced its intention to buy Activision Blizzard King, however has no connection with this strategic choice.
“The sentiment I’ve heard from the folks at Treyarch is that they’re extremely excited about having an extra year. In 2019 I wrote an article that talked in part about how hard they had to stick to the rushed schedule of Black Ops 4, here it’s the other way around“, Jason Schreier commented on Twitter. Far from denying Bloomberg’s article, Activision contented itself with an evasive response by highlighting “an exciting program of premium and free-to-play Call of Duty experiences for this year, next year and beyond.“
If the absence of a new Call of Duty in 2023 will have a considerable impact on the market, as already foreseen Matt Piscatella of the NPD, that does not mean that the franchise will be forgotten for a year. Activision has the means to compensate by offering more content for the next Modern Warfare and Warzone, not to mention its Call of Duty Mobile in preparation. Bloomberg even mentions the release of a “new free-to-play online title” at Activision without further details.
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