Modern Warfare 3

I suppose we all saw this coming at some point...but perhaps not so soon. Today, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was announced for release in November of this year - following the trend set by Activision's HUGE video game franchise for the past few years. It's funny how this news is actually kind of surprising, despite the fact that in recent years Activion's approach to Call of Duty has been almost laughably predictable. Following a massive legal dispute, Jason West and Vince Zampella (Infinity Ward's lead men, effectively) left the company (the details of which are still a little bit foggy) and scuttled off (loudly) to form their own developer, 'Respawn Entertainment', owned by the other third party publishing mammoth, EA. 35 employees have since followed suit. With such time and effort devoted to this issue (arguably the biggest split in gaming history), and bearing such colossal losses in terms of skilled developers, there were significant eyebrows being raised as to whether Infinity Ward could possibly complete and release the third iteration of the CoD Modern Warfare series by 2011. It had seemed likely that relative rookies 'Sledgehammer Games' were filling in for this year and taking the reins on an all new Call of Duty title (rumoured to be set in space, or the future) - meaning that the 3 publishers would rotate around, potentially getting more than 2 years of solid work under their belts. The demand is definitely there for it - just check the sales figures. Modern Warfare 2 smashed commercial records, only for Black Ops to do the same thing again. Apparently though, we won't be getting this pyramid effect just yet, if ever - it's not quite happened like that. It seems that now Sledgehammer are finishing off Modern Warfare 3 for Infinity Ward. The two companies will share the development of the single player modes, while multiplayer will be handled by 'Raven Software'. Interesting. Sort of.

This game sold a little bit well...

Ultimately, whatever happens, Modern Warfare 3 is going to make Activision a shit-ton of money - as surely will any subsequent games in the series. The only problem now is what's going to be done by those chaps at Respawn Entertainment. Quite rightly they're angry, and we could be seeing a massive sum of cash going their way through legal action. We shall see. I can't say I'm terribly excited about the release of MW3 later this year, but I know I'll end up getting it anyway. It's just the way it works. We scoff at the way Activision milks its franchises, with a repeated (and now stale) formula that practically steals money from the masses, yet we buy every Call of Duty game anyway. Can't blame 'em now, can we?