Following all the rumors that started to hit the Internet late last night,. Activision has now officially confirmed that the two founders of their development studio Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella are indeed no longer with the developer. Activision vets Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich are the new "interim" heads of Infinity Ward. Activision's press release did not address what they put in their annual report on Monday which the company claims there were "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward." "This news was buried in an otherwise upbeat press announcement where the publisher announced plans to expand their Call of Duty franchise into other genres.

The press release confirmed what has been known for a while; Infinity Ward is developing two downloadable expansions for 2009's hit shooter Modern Warfare 2 that will be released later this year. An all new Call of Duty game from developer Treyarch will be released in the fall of 2010 but no setting was announced. In 2011 another new Call of Duty game will be released but no developer for that game was revealed.

The publisher also confirmed what many folks had speculated on in the past couple of months; that yet another Call of Duty game is in the works at the newly formed Sledgehammer Games developer, formed by the former leaders of EA's Visceral Games. Sledgehammer's Call of Duty game will be an action-adventure title rather than a first person shooter but no release date was announced. In addition, Activision is chatting with a number of unnamed partners to bring a Call of Duty game to Asian countries, presumably as an online-only game.