Activision: Call of Duty 2020 ‘already generating excitement in playtests’

Activision Blizzard has said 2020’s unannounced, premium Call of Duty game is already generating a positive reaction among playtesters.

During the publisher’s fourth quarter earnings call on Thursday, president and chief operating officer Coddy Johnson also confirmed plans to release the game between October and December this year.

“The franchise has never been better positioned for growth and there’s more to come, including entirely new experiences within the Modern Warfare universe and then of course, in Q4 this year, a new premium Call of Duty release which is already generating excitement in our playtests,” he said.

Chief financial officer Dennis Durkin later added: “We can’t wait to unveil what out teams have been working on and we feel great about the content, although as is customary, we are prudently assuming lower sell-in in Q4 versus Modern Warfare this past year.”

Activision reportedly overhauled its plans for 2020’s Call of Duty game following a dispute between its internal studios and put Black Ops developer Treyarch in charge.

That’s according to a May 2019 report by Kotaku, which claimed that the relationship between previous joint lead studios Sledgehammer (CoD: WWII) and Raven (Singularity) had suffered so much that Activision moved them into support roles for the 2020 game.

Treyarch will now lead development on Black Ops 5 for 2020, which will attempt to salvage work completed for Raven and Sledgehammer’s game, which was due to be set during the Cold War, likely in Vietnam, the report claimed.

Black Ops 5 will likely be a cross-gen game, to coincide with the launch of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, it added.

The move would mark a significant shift for Activision’s Call of Duty series, which since 2012 has alternated its development between three studios: Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer, with Raven regularly providing development support.