Activision has delayed next year's Call of Duty game

[Humza]

What just happened? For the first time since 2005, Activision is breaking Call of Duty’s annual release cycle by delaying 2023’s premium entry into the following year. This will not only give Infinity Ward’s upcoming 2022 Modern Warfare sequel and Warzone 2 more time to settle in with players, but also allow Treyarch to fine-tune and polish the experience for its 2024 iteration.

The quantity vs. quality aspect of the Call of Duty franchise hasn’t really bothered Activision for nearly two decades, considering how every new annual release tops the sales chart and brings in tons of money to the publisher. However, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg reports that next year’s main entry is being pushed back into 2024.

While it’s speculated that the delay could have to do with Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Schreier notes that isn’t the case. What instead led to this decision has been CoD: Vanguard’s poor performance, at least compared to previous titles. Despite being the second biggest release of 2021, Sledgehammer Games’ Vanguard posted a 40 percent decline in launch sales over 2020’s Black Ops Cold War.

As for the ongoing year, the release of Infinity Ward’s MW sequel remains on track, while it looks like Warzone 2 will be filling the gap in 2023. A total of 11 studios are reportedly involved with this year’s CoD that’s built on a new engine, featuring more realistic gore and new mechanics like weapon jamming and a morality system in the main entry, while big changes to the BR formula are can be expected for the Warzone sequel.

Moreover, while the upcoming MW title can be safely expected to arrive on both last-gen and current-gen consoles, the free-to-play Warzone 2 and Treyarch’s premium 2024 entry will likely be current-gen only. Hopefully this means, among other improvements, the addition of a FOV slider for console players who've long requested this feature to compete more fairly with the PC community.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93512-activision-has-delayed-next-year-call-duty-game.html

 

[Geralt]

They should delay it forever. I only liked COD 1 and 2. The rest was a diarrhea of games that is finally stopping, at least for one year. Too much milking.

 

[Uncle Al]

Ditto!!!

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

If you are going to finally start putting out quality and not quantity then I'm all for you delaying COD games.

 

[Puiu]

I guess they saw what happened to BF

 

[BadThad]

They should delay it forever. I only liked COD 1 and 2. The rest was a diarrhea of games that is finally stopping, at least for one year. Too much milking.

COD 1&2 were AWESOME! I tried a few CODs since and didn't like them either.

 

[Nobina]

MW 2019 was the last good one. Others were cash grabs and I feel sorry for anyone that bought them.

 

[McKocoa]

I am personally blaming this on the stuck ship in the Suez canal

 

[Skjorn]

I guess they saw what happened to BF

Did you miss the part where Vanguard sales were down 40%?

 

[Puiu]

Did you miss the part where Vanguard sales were down 40%?

Even if it didn't sell as good as Black Ops Cold War, it still sold fairly well.

I'm not talking about sales since it actually sold ok (at least initially, 4.2mil units in the first week). It's the player numbers that are the problem. People quickly abandoned it after trying the game. It currently has a 24 hours concurrent players peak on SteamDB of just 2.2k.

You just can't sell DLC/MTX with such low numbers and that's where EA makes most of its money.

To put things in perspective, BF5 has a 24 hours peak of 23k, 10x the player count. BF 1 still gets over 8.5k and BF4 is around 2k. Yes, a game released 9 years ago gets similar numbers

... oh god BF4 was released in 2013, I feel old.