Call of Duty leakers are stating that eleven of Activision's development studios are working on the latest installment, which is rumored to be titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and will work as a direct sequel to the 2019 reboot. Many of these studios are Call of Duty vets, including three Infinity Ward studios and Treyarch, but fans are worried about what this means.
Activison has a long history of attaching many of its studios to the Call of Duty franchise, much to the chagrin of fans of the studios’ other titles. For example, Raven Software went from the cult hit Singularity to Call of Duty, as did Toys for Bob, which was working on the Skylander and Crash Bandicoot franchises. When a publisher has a franchise as massively popular as Call of Duty is, it makes sense to put as many people to work on it as possible.
Leaker RalphsValve is claiming on Twitter that a grand total of 11 studios are working on Modern Warfare 2’s development: Demonware; High Moon Studios; Toys for Bob; Infinity Ward Austin, TX; Infinity Ward Poland; Infinity Ward, LA; Beenox; Activision; Raven Software; Sledgehammer Games; and Treyarch.
This is an 'all hands on deck' moment, but while some gamers are concerned that this means that development is having trouble, the leaker stated otherwise. According to them the surrounding circumstances are that Activision considers this game a 'once-in-a-generation' title, which is why it has all the studios it possibly can get to work on it. Many of these studios worked on other games before getting into the Call of Duty business, but Activision plans on this being a massive hit, and according to the leakers things are moving along just fine.
The claims were backed up by leaker Tom Henderson in a YouTube video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh-lT0Y3VQk
While this is certainly a massive number of people working on the game, additional studios contributing development help is no new thing for the franchise. The Modern Warfare 2019 reboot was developed by Infinity Ward, but also was helped by High Moon Studios, Beenox, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer Games. 11 studios does seem like some sort of record, though.
Throwing a new wrinkle into the development is of course the fact that Microsoft is in the process of purchasing Activision Blizzard, but it has promised that this doesn’t mean that their biggest franchises will be exclusive to Xbox consoles and that the next three Call of Duty installments will be multi-platform. For a franchise like this that’s using all the resources available to the publishing giant, it certainly wouldn’t make sense to restrict the game’s audience by pulling it from PS5.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is rumored to be released sometime later this year.