Now with less creative firepower!

Wow, what an interesting couple of days out there for Call of Duty fans! Earlier today, Infinity Ward (the people who make the good CoD games) heads Vince Zampella and Jason West updated their various social networking sites to reflect that they no longer worked at IW. This led to rampant speculation (on the internet?! Shocking!) as to the future of the CoD games. Activision has since announced:

• Activision is planning on turning Call of Duty into “high-margin digital online content and further the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.” In English? Expect Call of Duty: Pay to Play MMO edition (a la World of Warcraft), or perhaps a Call of Duty RTS game? Or third person action game? Or some such crap.
• Before you get excited about the above, remember that Activision, fresh off purchasing Guitar Hero, made such wonderful games as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Band Hero. Mmmmmhmmmm. Classic entertainment!
• There will be a Treyarch-made CoD game this year, and an unspecified developer will put one out in 2011. (Ruh Roh!)
• A third CoD game will be made by Sledgehammer Games. If you’re not familiar with them, it’s because they’re new! And it’s a studio formed by the creative leads that created Dead Space! The game will, and I quote, “extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre.” So, a Resident: Call of Duty mashup! Yay!
• IW’s leads were canned for “insubordination” and breach of contract. I read this as “IW didn’t feel like driving their core franchise into the ground”.

Remember: the team at IW was responsible for Medal of Honor before EA fucked that franchise into the ground. And here they stand where Activision is ready to run CoD into shitty-game-ville. So, I for one can’t wait to see where the team ends up and what they create.

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