Activision attempts to close the book on the Infinity Ward saga after security locked down the studio in March 2009.
The story so far: Modern Warfare 2 sold a veritable butt-load of copies when it came out about a year ago. Vince Zampella and Jason West, the heads of the studio Infinity Ward, complained that none of performance bonuses were given for all of the hard work so Activision decided to invade the building and forcibly fire both Zampella and West. The pair went on to form Respawn Entertainment, and the bonuses the pair would have enjoyed were reportedly given back to the employees of Infinity Ward. This year’s Call of Duty was developed at Treyarch, but as Blops is even more of a success than MW2, Activision wants to make sure the public knows that the next installment is safe. Infinity Ward is doing just fine, Treyarch is fine, even Sledgehammer is fine. Nothing to see here.
“The Treyarch studio, which made this year’s game, has done better than what the Infinity Ward studio could achieve a year ago,” said Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Activision’s parent company Vivendi. “We have reconstructed Infinity Ward. We have been very happy with the way we have been able to reconstruct it.”
“We also have a third studio which was created about a year-and-a-half ago called Sledgehammer, which is working on Call of Duty properties,” he added. “We believe this set up of studios working on Call of Duty has demonstrated it can do very well.”
So don’t worry. The next Call of Duty is going to be totally awesome. It’s still not clear if it’s coming from Infinity Ward or Sledgehammer Games, the company founded in November 2009 by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. But I’m pretty sure that it will be a first person shooter, possibly with a military theme. It will also make a bunch of money.
Just throwing that out there.
Source: IGN
