Eurogamer: Activision confirms a new Call of Duty this year; a 'shame' to leave MW and CW behind

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-05-yes-theres-another-big-new-call-of-duty-game-due-out-q4-2021

Activision has confirmed plans to release a new Call of Duty game during the fourth quarter of 2021.

"We will benefit from a full year of Warzone driving upgrades to our premium content and incremental in-game player investment, and we have a substantial opportunity to continue migrating the community to Black Ops Cold War as well as another strong premium release planned for Q4 in 2021," said Activision's chief financial officer Dennis Durkin in a financial call last night.

"In our outlook, we are conservatively assuming Call of Duty premium units are lower year-over-year. However, with opportunities in-game across all platforms including the ramp up of Call of Duty Mobile in China we do expect growth in net bookings overall for the Call of Duty franchise."

So, another big, triple-A PC and console Call of Duty is set to come out in time for Christmas, confirming Activision just won't give the series a break.

I've already reported on how disappointing it is to see Activision leave behind the excellent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare just a year after it came out.

Infinity Ward's shooter still enjoys a healthy playerbase - it doesn't take long to find matches at all. And this is why I think it deserves a next-gen update and a full-blown second year of content.

As it stands, there's no news on a new set of multiplayer maps, new weapons or anything other than integration with Warzone and Black Ops Cold War's season one battle pass - which does not include content for Modern Warfare.

Given Activision's handling of the franchise up to this point, I fully expect Treyarch's Black Ops Cold War, which is a fun game in its own right and with plenty of players, to be left behind when COD 2021, rumoured to be led by Call of Duty: WW2 maker Sledgehammer Games, comes out later this year.

As I wrote in my Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War review, the game offers "solid action with the potential for greatness". It's hard to realise that potential, however, in just a year.

Activision's strategy of releasing a new Call of Duty game every year obviously does the business for the company. In 2020, revenue from Call of Duty approximately doubled year-over-year, Activision said. More than 100 million people play Call of Duty every month.

Full year Call of Duty premium unit sales grew over 40 per cent year-over-year, with a further strong shift to digital downloads, Activision said.

And with the launch of season one for Black Ops Cold War - and its integration into battle royale behemoth Warzone - sales of Black Ops Cold War rose sharply year-over-year in December and January, Activision said. Warzone, clearly, drives demand for the premium Call of Duty games.

The Call of Duty franchise is printing money. There's no reason for Activision to give the series a year off, because releasing a new game each year continues to do the business.

But it's a crying shame to see each title effectively dismissed after one year out in the field.

Yea, I guess this is no surprise to most people, as Activision always publishes a new COD ever year. But I agree with Eurogamer, Modern Warfare is such a great game, and Cold War is not bad either (though inferior to Modern Warfare in my opinion). Would've been great to see them support their titles a little longer. A new Battlefield is expected to come out this year. So at least that should be interesting.

Thoughts, SW? Have you moved on from MW or CW and ready for a new Call of Duty?

0 interest in treyarch games. They've been sub-par for a while.

Still playing MW.

I moved on from Cod years ago such a trash series

How does one get excited about anything CoD related?

Death, taxes, and another Call of Duty game.

Just waiting for the three-word-maximum summary of where and/or when the inevitable 5 1/2 hour shooting gallery is going to be set in this time - so I can do a quick nod in acknowledgement before continuing to ignore it.

Is this one going to be actually good? MW sucked, haven't tried Cold War but it looks pretty blah. I'll stick to MWR until a decent CoD game comes out, and I'm not holding my breath.

Whoop.

There's a new Call of Duty every year. That's actually why I stopped playing them, I got tired of spending $60 on titles that were obsolete in a year. Besides, each release is only a mild update over the previous with little more than an expansion packs worth of difference. It's just too damn much.

Which studio is making it this year?

People bitch about this game so much yet it is the best selling game almost every year for the past decade. According to Nintendo fannies that means it is factually the most fun game on the market. 😎

Movie game equivalent of FPS. thats COD been.

Sorry, we are not taking about Metro Exodus.

The series has been trash since World at War, no idea how anyone can pay full price for the same game every year.

Good question.

Cold war was made by Treyarch, Raven did the singleplayer and Sledgehammer was a support studio.

So Infinty Ward seems likely... or Sledgehammer, but I sure hope not.

I love CoD: Cold War, and have been playing it a lot since November, it’s very disappointing to see they are already planning on replacing it, I feel like they should give it atleast 2 or 3 years.

They replace every CoD every year with no exceptions. What made you think it'd be different with Cold War?

@ratchetclank92: You don't have to stop playing it ya know?

@vfighter:

Yeah but it detracts from the online player base as more people jump to the latest one.

@ratchetclank92: I'm still playing MWR from 2017 and it has a good size player base yet, Cold War should be fine for awhile after the new game comes out. :)

Well, that's a surprise. I definitely didn't expect that.

Is it really a surprise? Activison will keep releasing Call Of Duty every year until it stops making them money the same way that the Guitar Heroes and Tony Hawk games did.

That's my major problem with this series, Activision releases a new COD and then right away it becomes obsolete because the next one will come out right away. The last COD I bought was Modern Warfare 2 and after 10 years of the COD milking I'm still not interested to ever going back to that series.

@AcidTango: if only people have the same awareness towards Pokemon games.

I have both Modern Warfare and Cold War. Shit takes up like 280 GB on my hard drive lol. I love the maps in Modern Warfare. They're really fun. Some of the best maps I've ever played. I also think MW has more of a focus on close range combat which I like more. Cold War seems like a snipers paradise. I do like the Combined Arms Assault mode though.

@eoten: I started treating CoD like a sports game franchise. Get an old one every 5 years or so for a couple bucks, mostly for local multiplayer with friends. Much as I hate the annualized release strategy, it does cause used copies to depriciate pretty quick.

The worst are the sports games from EA such as Madden, NHL, and FIFA.

And pokemon, plus whatever else nintendo. Reharshes but somehow gets a pass.

To be fair a lot of people did give Game Freak a lot of shit for being lazy with Pokemon Sword and Shield.

What's the difference people criticize sports and CoD games every year like Pokemon. Pokemon S&S still somehow ended up as one of the best selling pokemon games.

Last CoD i bought was MW3 on PS3. I love Battlefield and Overwatch way better

Yeah I know. Pokemon and also the COD and sports games are still selling well. They are all milked rehashes that makes a lot of money.

I'm glad Activision has been releasing CoD every year. Even though I've been away for some time of the game, now I think I'm coming back. I've been watching people play online and it brought me some good memories. Zombies were great

@sakaixx: hi, I remember pokemon in gameboy games and even until gamecube. Didn't hear much of it afterwards. What is the latest on pokemon games? It would be great to check them out

I don't buy games from CRAPtivision, so none of this bothers me.

I am getting pretty tired of COD by now, but yeah I do find Modern Warfare a bit more interesting with all that advanced, cool weaponry. I don't blame Activision for milking the franchise. Each new game sells like hot cakes, so why wouldn't they continue deliver new games? I am expecting Modern Warfare 4, 5 , 6 and 7 in the not too distant future. Maybe even Modern Warfare Ultra Turbo The Next Generation volume 2.

Call of duty will keep releasing every year until it slows down and activision stop making insane amounts of money on it. Gamers have shown that they are willing to pay 60+ a year for a new game in the franchise. It’s the madden of FPS. Hopefully the new battlefield game will be better than battlefield V as I’d rather play that.

Another year, another CoD/Assassin's Creed/etc released.

I often feel this way as well--I see all the comments above and wonder how CoD sells so well when all of us are tired of it--but I don't think any of us on here are particularly casual; we went through the effort to make an account on a video game website, to talk about video games.

CoD is for casuals. Halo is for casuals. Fortnite is for casuals. All these games are made for people that buy this specific game and only that game, and play it for years.

Animal crossing outsold CoD and its only 1 platform what do you say to that CoD is in a lot of systems.

I still enjoy COD. They just released a new Zombies mode in Cold War and it's pretty fun.

Yep it's time to move on. Cold War sucks ass... Modern Warfare is completely overran with cheaters by now, and Warzone is played out (although I'm sure they will string it along to the next game).

A new CoD (I'm hoping for MW2 or something good like MW and not the huge step backwards Cold War was) and BF6 in one year? Let's do this.. about time.. these games need at least a little competition.

Hopefully BF6 will be more like 2,3,4, or Hardline... keep 1 and 5 WAY away from it, just like they should keep Cold War WAY away from the next CoD game.

Why do people say BF3 and 4 are great, but 1 and 5 are bad?

They're all just as crap, imo. All of them have small and cramped maps, and have this very arcadey call of duty feel. Run, shoot, die, repeat. All of that fun Battlefield strategy shit you had in BF1942, 2, 2142 and to an extent BC2 is completely gone. It's like everyone forgot what BF was about, and gives it praise for being a slightly larger and prettier call of duty.

@Litchie: Battlefield games have small cramped maps? I dunno maybe some do but the only one I played, BF1, had some big maps and was a blast to play. Even the TDM maps which were WAY smaller to give it a more CoD feel were 2-3x the size of CoD maps.

Why wouldn't they? GAAS model works real well for them. It took Cold War 6 weeks for it to reach the sales MW2019 did in 2 days, but it was just as profitable. Lock progression behind a paywall, and sales matter a lot less.

SHUT THE **** UP

BF never been strategy. its always been arcade shooter. even BF2 too.

Personally I much prefer "small and cramped maps" that provide more of a challenge and require quick thinking. Yes, I understand that traditionally that isn't what BF is, although I do prefer the gameplay in most BF games over most CoD games (although the newest Modern Warfare was damn good). 1 and 5 are terrible in my opinion though.. to each their own on that. I actually prefer the one life game modes on BF4 and Hardline (as I do in any shooter) more than anything else but really enjoyed rush on Bad Company 1 and 2 and even enjoyed BF 2,3,4 on some of the larger game modes as well to some extent.

I personally just feel as though BF 1 and 5 were extremely dumbed down, they screwed up movement, and became very static feeling.. and don't even get me started on them introducing invisible barriers instead of a warning when you go out of bounds or try to reach a high point they don't want you to reach.

Also, I don't play BF for strategy unless it's one life and that goes for CoD as well in modes like Search or Defuse. I actually prefer tactical one life games like SOCOM (damn you SONY.. give us a new game) or the newer Rogue Company.

Either way, yes, there is strategy in any one life shooting mode and some BF games have those modes. 1 and 5 did not and they both just tried to push the bigger is better philosophy while stripping all life and character from the games. A variety of game modes and different party sizes is much preferable to me. That way I can play smaller more intimate settings if I have a small group on or we can play the bigger modes if we have 5 or more.

I love any game where call outs and playing as a group can be the difference between winning and losing.