Activision taps third team to create Call of Duty games @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on November 19, 2009

News: Or do they?

A Los Angeles Times article on the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has revealed that Activision has tapped a third development team to create Call of Duty-related content in the future.

As Activision seems to be discovering this year with Guitar Hero, there's danger when a title is overexposed with too many iterations. Nonetheless, the publisher has aggressive expansion plans for Call of Duty. Although Infinity Ward and Treyarch have produced sequels in alternating years since 2005, the publisher now has a third development studio working on future versions.

However, multiple development teams working on the Call of Duty franchise is actually nothing new for Activision.

N-Space has worked closely with the publisher for years and has been responsible for all three Call of Duty games on the DS. Certain Affinity, the team behind the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead, has also worked with Activision on developing downloadable content for Call of Duty: World at War. While unclear, the article could be referring to any of these scenarios.

Or, it could be referring to any number of spinoff projects Activision executives have teased in recent months. For exmaple, in March, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stated that he wants to publish a Massively Multiplayer Online game set in the Call of Duty universe. And during an E3 webcast, Activision Publishing's Mike Griffith talked about plans to expand the franchise into new genres: "[T]here's tremendous potential to take Call of Duty to new theaters, new settings and even related genres."

For now, the only Call of Duty content that is definitely in development are new maps for Modern Warfare 2 and Treyarch's biannual addition to the series, the currently unannounced Call of Duty 7.