Activision president Rob Kostich has confirmed that the company has the Call of Duty franchise’s future mapped out through 2027. He also confirmed that more than 3,000 people are now working on the Call of Duty series for Activision.
Speaking to Games Beat, Kostich said, “We’re constantly in our planning phase, our long-term planning phase. Right now, we have games planned out all the way through ’27 for the things that we’re working on.”
Kostich gave this answer in response to a question about how Activision responds after a Call of Duty game doesn’t resonate the way it hoped, as was the case with Call of Duty: Vanguard.
“We’ve got a massive focus group around the world who tells us what they think each and every day about the franchise that we pay particular attention to,” he said.
The next Call of Duty game is Modern Warfare III, which releases in November. After that, 2024’s Call of Duty is rumored to focus on the Iraq War. Kostich told Games Beat that Activision has already done “a lot of games” set in the future, adding that the company, “Probably went as far there as we possibly could.”
Reading between the lines here, it sounds like additional Call of Duty games set in the future may be unlikely at this stage. There were previously rumors about Activision returning to the Advanced Warfare series. Activision has, of course, also made Call of Duty games set in the past–Kostich said 2017’s Call of Duty: WWII performed “really, really well.”
“I think most importantly, that we feel like we actually need to provide good differentiated experiences, good things for people to get in, and feel like they’re experiencing new kinds of fun,” he said.
Also in the interview, Kostich confirmed that there are 3,000-plus people working on the Call of Duty series right now. “These games are quite labor-intensive,” Kostich said. “They’re monumental efforts.”
He said games today are “a lot harder to make,” with additional requirements for resources than before. For Call of Duty specifically, the series has expanded beyond the traditional yearly release to also include Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile.
“It requires that level of resource to fulfill every aspect of the franchise. We’ve been very focused on that and our teams have done, I think, a really good job of managing that. The scope and size of dev teams nowadays compared to what it was when we started is dramatically different,” Kostich said.
Modern Warfare III launches on November 10, but you don’t have to wait that long to play it. The game’s first multiplayer beta weekend begins on October 6.
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