Each new entry of Call of Duty has been the bestselling console game in North America almost every year since 2009, and it’s often the case that a prior year’s entry ranks in the top five or even three bestselling games of the year due to Activision’s late holiday release schedule. The decision, though subject to change due to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, could have a substantial ripple effect on video game retail and the stability of the traditional, boxed game product. Treyarch is said to be working on the entry after Modern Warfare 2, and that the decision to skip next year's release involved delaying that game to 2024. Infinity Ward’s title due out later this year will be a sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot coinciding with a sequel to the Warzone battle royale mode. The publisher did not deny the news, with an Activision spokesperson saying the company has “an exciting slate of premium and free-to-play Call of Duty experiences for this year, next year and beyond,” and that it looks “forward to sharing more details when the time is right.” Bloomberg reports that while Activision won’t release a new Call of Duty in 2023, it does plan to release a new free-to-play game. It would be the first year Activision hasn’t released a new Call of Duty since 2005, when there was a two-year gap between the first Call of Duty in 2003 and its sequel.
BLIZZARD CALL OF DUTY 4 RELEASE SERIES
After more than 16 years of annual releases and top-charting sales milestones, the shooter series is skipping a year.Ī Bloomberg story published late Tuesday detailed Activision Blizzard’s plans to press pause on its most successful game property in 2023, with the intention of releasing a new game from subsidiary Infinity Ward later this year and then waiting until 2024 to release another main entry in the long-running shooter series. The creators of Call of Duty are doing the unthinkable.