Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard confirmed that Call of Duty could skip the release year of any premium games in 2023, but a new report from Tom Henderson suggests that Sledgehammer Games may have already started pre-production for a new game. Slegehammer Games is one of the studios working on major Call of Duty games alongside Infinity Ward and Treyarch.
The studio’s latest title was 2021’s COD Vanguard, which fell short of the publisher’s expectations and wasn’t quite the giant blockbuster that fans were hoping for. However, the studio has shown interest in exploring new stories in the past as part of the Vanguard series.
There are very few details about the new Sledgehammer project so far, and it is not entirely clear whether this will be a full-fledged COD game. Henderson suggests the game could be a Zombies project to fill a two-year hiatus from 2022 to 2024.
Sledgehammer is reportedly in pre-production for a new Call of Duty game
Call of Duty has followed an annual release structure for nearly 2 decades, meaning it has always released a cash on delivery game since 2005. Infinity Ward is currently working on the 2019 sequel to Modern Warfare, which is likely to be released. in 2022.
According to rumors, the sequel to Modern Warfare is scheduled to be shown at the end of April. In the meantime, Activision has also announced Warzone for mobile, which will likely release in late 2022 or early 2023.
There are several Call of Duty projects currently in the works, and a planned sequel to Warzone is currently in development. It will be interesting to see if Activision decides to fill in the “year gap”in 2023 with the release of a smaller COD title like a standalone zombie game.
The franchise has had a few stumbles in the recent past, most notably with Vanguard, which failed to resonate with fans and didn’t necessarily generate great financial results.