Activision to Announce New Call of Duty, Hopes to Retain More Players

During its Q1 financial report briefing, Activision Blizzard said the next Call of Duty announcement should be coming before the end of the fiscal year’s second quarter — in other words, before the end of June.

Call of Duty announcements usually don’t happen at E3, often coming in May or shortly before the big June event. However, this year’s E3 is already remarkable for its wildly different lineup, so it’s possible Activision might make an announcement then.

Not much else was said about the announcement or what fans and investors could expect from the upcoming CoD game. That’s unusual in itself, since Activision, like many other companies, often gives teases or minor reveals to keep players interested and optimistic.

However, Activision COO and President Collister Johnson did say the team is working to ensure the new game has plenty of launch and post-launch content to keep players interested. Long-term retention has been a problem for Call of Duty for several years in a row, where player bases rapidly shrink a few months after release. Johnson said:

…we…recognize that we need to do even more to maintain the breadth of our Call of Duty player base beyond the launch quarters and the Call of Duty team is hard at work on that for this fall’s big content release excitement for which is incredibly high around the organization.

We expect that both the launch and post-launch content will bring game-changing experiences to our fans.

That was about it for CoD news and teases in the report.

Activision is planning on releasing Call of Duty on mobile sometime this year, though, made possible by advances in mobile technology, so it’s possible the company will take a Nintendo approach and use mobile as a way to keep people invested in the main game.