In an earnings call this week, Activision Blizzard confirmed that we will be getting another Call of Duty game. I know, shocking stuff. The franchise has seen yearly installments since 2005. The only time it didn’t was between the first Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2, between 2003 and 2005.
We’ve previously reported that CoD 2020 could be called Black Ops, retaining the naming convention of last year’s title. We’ve also reported that it’s changed studios (for sure) and might be called Black Ops 5 (not for sure). It’s certain, though, that we’ll learn more in the coming months.
As expected, sales figures for Modern Warfare were also discussed during the earnings call, and Activision is currently not expecting Call of Duty 2020 to sell as well as last year’s reboot.
Since these types of calls are often meant to make stakeholders feel better about upcoming projects, it’s a touch odd that Activision is not expecting the next installment of CoD to do as well as the last installment. However, setting expectations lower could mean that this year’s entry could be doing something different, which is always a nice change of pace.
It could also just be because Modern Warfare generated $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2019, which is an astounding figure to try and match this year.
For more Call of Duty, be sure to check out our review of the latest Modern Warfare. While other critics were mostly pleased with the first-person shooter, we were a bit less enthused.
If you’re of that variety and looking for something genuinely different in the world of shooters, you could always have a look at our list of the most exciting FPS games of 2020.
Whether or not Call of Duty delivers and does something new in 2020, or sticks to the same reliable formula, at least we can always rely on other developers to keep pushing the genre forward as a whole.
