sledgehammer-games posts

Activision's biggest game franchise by far is the Call of Duty franchise and everyone expects a new game in the series to be released by November of 2011. Now a report from the Los Angeles Times claims that the next game in the shooter series will indeed be Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and that three development teams are working on it.

According to the report, which does not name its sources, the game's main developer Infinity Ward is getting help on the single player campaign from another in-house developer Sledgehammer Games. Infinity Ward apparently needed the help since much of the team left the studio in 2010 following the firing of the studio's founders by Activision. In addition, the article claims that another developer, Raven Software, is handling the multiplayer portions of Modern Warfare 3. The downside? A Call of Duty spin-off game from Sledgehammer Games is now on hold while the team helps Infinity Ward.

In related news, our sister site Joystiq has all of the new and gory details of the current legal battle between Activision and Infinity Ward's former heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. In short, the court has now officially added Electronic Arts as a defendant in Activision's lawsuit against the duo.

With today's launch of Call of Duty Black Ops to stores and online, Activision's first person shooter franchise has moved into the 1960's as a setting after several WWII shooters and two games set in the present. So will one of the next games in the series be set in the future?

That's what Gamasutra is suggesting in a new article about the franchise. One of the three studios that is making new Call of Duty games for Activision is Sledgehammer Games, formed in 2009. The article claims, " ... industry sources say Sledgehammer's Call of Duty will be set in the future and feature, for lack of a better term, space Marines ... " Treyarch, the team behind Call of Duty Black Ops, will likely be making a new game in the series as will Infinity Ward even though its founders and a number of its team members either left or were fired earlier this year.

Publisher Activision is determined to expand its massively successful Call of Duty franchise and one of the ways the company is doing that is putting a third developer in charge of making a game in the series. Adding to Infinity Ward and Treyarch is the newly launched Sledgehammer Games division. However it was previously announced that the Call of Duty game Sledgehammer was making would be an "action-adventure" title.

Now it looks like that may be premature. A job listing on Gamasutra specifically states that Sledgehammer Games is recruiting people to work on its "Call of Duty FPS development team." Unless they plan to put in some adventure game elements it doesn't sound like this new title will deviate very far from the normal Call of Duty game.

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.

It's always a good day when a juicy rumor hits the interwebs and this one is a particularly interesting one. VG247.com is reporting through unnamed sources that developer Infinity Ward is going to take a pass on making the next Modern Warfare game and instead work on a all new game project.

The story doesn't go into detail on what that new game might be but it claims its anonymous sources have said Modern Warfare 3 might go to the newly established Sledgehammer Games or an unnamed Canadian studio. Meanwhile Infinity Ward is expected to release the first downloadable content for Modern Warfare 2 this spring for the Xbox 360 version.

A lot of gaming news web sites (us included) had fun with the recent official announcement of Activision's new internal development studio Sledgehammer Games. Now the Northern California-based studio has more than just a press release. It has a whole new web site to attract people who might want to join their team.

Their careers web page may offer up some hints on their still unannounced first game. It looks like some of the job listings are calling for people with "Serious passion for Shooters, Console or PC." Others ask for multiplayer experience for PCs as well. It sounds like the studio won't be a console-only team which in our eyes is a good thing. Our guess for their first title? A Zhu Zhu Pets shooter (Ok, not really).