2023 will be the first year in almost twenty years where we will not be entitled to a new Call of Duty if the information received by Bloomberg is correct.
(Feature image: Call of Duty Vanguard, Credit: Activision)
The company is reportedly delaying the release of the next Call of Duty because the most recent release hasn’t met expectations, leading some in high places to believe they’re introducing new releases too quickly. This information comes to us from the Bloomberg site which would have even received information from anonymous informants linked to the project.
A new premium Call of Duty has come out every year since 2005. Next year’s offerings will include a new free-to-play game as well as content for Warzone 2 and 2022’s Modern Warfare.
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 22, 2022
The decision would have no connection with the recent sale of Activision, bought by Microsoft, but rather with the decrease in sales of the last opus. To fill the void that this will leave in the year 2023, Activision plans to create additional content for its latest game and even a new free-to-play game. Treyarch, the studio under Activision that is working on the postponed game, is said to be working on this new free game.
End of a tradition for Activision
This delay comes as a shock to the industry, since since the fall of 2005, Activision has been releasing a new big-budget title every year. Call of Duty games are also often among the best-selling games of the year and have sold more than 400 million copies since the series began in 2003.
Bloomberg had already reported earlier that Call of Duty 2023 might be postponed, following a rather disappointing year for Call of Duty Vanguard. Vanguard sales are suspected to have been affected by the still huge popularity of Call of Duty Warzone, the free-to-play game in the Call of Duty series released in 2020. Additionally, the release of Battlefield 2042, the series in direct competition with Call of Duty, in the same period as Vanguard would have probably also affected the sales of this title. The leaders may therefore have decided to space out the releases in order to give themselves more time to the titles already released and a better chance of making a profit on these big projects.