The Call of Duty franchise continues to be an absolute juggernaut, coming off of record successes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the free to play Warzone battle royale. Warzone has managed to pull in a staggering 85 million players and has quickly become another jewel in Activision’s crown with its ability to generate profit. Still, fans are always interested in what’s next for this popular franchise. Even after just releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in November, speculation regarding the next big title has already begun to heat up.
For a time, the development cycle Activision had set up was fairly easy to predict as Infinity Ward and Treyarch would alternate year to year before a third studio, Sledgehammer Games was created and added to the mix. Things are now a bit murkier as Raven Software has gotten involved and major studios like Sledgehammer have seemingly fallen back more into a support style role, lending a hand in both recently released Call of Duty titles.
However, Sledgehammer may be getting another chance to lead development once again if the latest report is to be believed. Prominent Call of Duty leaker Tom Henderson, who has a track record of credible leaks over the years, shared an image from his Twitter account showing the development cycles of the Call of Duty studios. Even though Modern Warfare launched in 2019, Infinity Ward continued to work on updates to Warzone well into 2020, handing it off fully this past September. Unfortunately for them, this would leave about 14 months to develop a new Call of Duty title from the ground up.
With Raven and Treyarch both working on Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Activision has therefore turned back to Sledgehammer Games to lead the new 2021 game. In fact, the studio has supposedly been working on this year’s game as far back as August 2019, giving them a little over two years to get ready from an expected November 2021 launch. It’s unknown what topic this new Call of Duty will focus on, though speculation has ranged from a variety of topics including a direct sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare.
The speculation appears to be a reversal of fortune for the studio, which was at the center of a number of rumors earlier in 2020 regarding the troubled development of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Sledgehammer was originally a collaborator on the title with Raven Software, before Treyarch was forced to intervene and take over the project from them, likely causing the game to miss its typical spring reveal as well as other marketing opportunities throughout the year. 2020 was certainly a different year for the usual release cycle for Call of Duty, so it’ll be interesting to see if 2021 can help return things to normal.
Call of Duty 2021 is currently in development.
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