Call of Duty isn’t skipping 2023 and will get a new game, report says

Instead of skipping a year, Activision’s Call of Duty franchise will get a full-price, stand-alone video game this fall, Bloomberg reports — but it’ll be a continuation of last year’s rebooted Call of duty: Modern Warfare II.

Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier noted in Thursday’s report that Activision’s plans for the series originally called for a “premium expansion” to Modern Warfare IIA new full-length game will be released in 2023, but it may not happen. This all goes back to 2020, when development difficulties moved Treyarch’s turn in Call of Duty’s three-studio rotation up a year, and brought us Black Ops Cold War – Call of DutyThe series was completed one year earlier than expected. Activision-owned Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and Sledgehammer Games had split production on the series, on a three-year development cycle, going back to 2014’s Advanced Warfare – Call of Duty.

Because of that workload hiccup, Activision at first planned to go through 2023 without a mainline Call of Duty entry, pushing Treyarch’s next regularly scheduled Call of Duty game to 2024. It was the paid expansion that Activision had envisioned. Modern Warfare: Call of Duty 2 is instead a “premium Call of Duty game” now, according to an Activision spokesperson, with a single-player campaign and new multiplayer maps, Bloomberg says.

Call of Duty’s 20th Anniversary will be observed in 2023. Infinity Ward’s Treyarch and Sledgehammer along with Activision Blizzard as a whole are involved in a attempted Microsoft acquisition worth $68.7billion. The attempt was made last year when regulators in the United Kingdom (USA), United States and European Union were concerned about antitrust.