Call of Duty will no longer be released every year and is changing its model! | Xbox One

This is a major upheaval for Activision Blizzard since its most famous license will change model. Call of Duty games will no longer necessarily be released every year since the publisher wants to switch to a less formatted structure.

Call of Duty: Activision’s unbreakable machine

The first Call of Duty game was released in 2003. Developed by the Infinity Ward studio, it was a hit with nearly 5 million units sold. But it’s the Modern Warfare episode, released four years later, that will propel the franchise to another level with more than 20 million copies sold.

Since then, the episodes have succeeded each year with sales oscillating between 20 and 30 million depending on the year. Call of Duty is now an integral part of the video game landscape and every year between October and November, players await the new episode. And for this year 2022, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is expected, developed by Infinity Ward.

Call of Duty will no longer be released every year, it’s official!

The Call of Duty recipe was turned upside down in 2020 with the release of Call of Duty: Warzone, a free Battle Royale released in impeccable condition and which has since been able to continually renew itself. The game had more than 100 million players a year after its release, enough to make the competition jealous.

When Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in January 2022, many questions were raised, and Bloomberg investigated the popular shooter franchise. According to their sources, discussions among high-ranking members of Activision were underway to change the series’ annual release model. And this is finally confirmed today.

Activision took advantage of the announcement of internal recruitment of 1100 QA testers to announce the air of nothing that the annual release of Call of Duty was no longer relevant. In an email sent to employees this week, COO Josh Taub confirmed that Call of Duty’s format has changed from an annual release to an “always on” model. In other words, the release rate of Call of Duty episodes will change in the future, but everything is still to be written.

Call of Duty: Warzone will be released at the end of 2022 as planned, but will a new Call of Duty be released at the same time in 2023? Nothing is less certain, especially since rumors speak of a postponement of Call of Duty 2023 to 2024! Speaking of the “always on” model, Activision could also decide to release a Call of Duty campaign in pieces and/or separately from the multiplayer part, which could live and evolve continuously over the years.

For the moment, the details are not yet known about this change, but it’s a safe bet that we will discover the content next year. Rumors point to the release of a specific zombie mode, but we also know that Activision is due to release four major Call of Duty games by 2022. This includes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Warzone mobile or Warzone 2 which should not only be available on Xbox Series X|S and PS5. In any case, the franchise still has a bright future ahead of it.