Call Of Duty Will Skip 2023, According To New Report

gameinformer.com:

For the first time in almost two decades, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise will take a year off, according to a new report from Bloomberg. 

This means that there will be no mainline Call of Duty game in 2023, a first for the franchise which has had new entries released every year since 2005. Bloomberg’s report posits that Activision Blizzard, which is going to acquired by Microsoft, has pushed its 2023 release out of that year as result of Call of Duty: Vanguard, which was the 2021 release for the series. Vanguard failed to meet expectations and some executives within the publisher feel that new iterations of Call of Duty are releasing too often for one to make as big as an impact as franchise releases use to make. 

This decision is not related to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In fact, Microsoft does not have any authority over the publisher as this acquisition is not set to close until next year at the earliest. 

Following Activision Blizzard’s three-studio rotation for developing Call of Duty entries (Infinity Ward develops one and then the next year Treyarch develops a Call of Duty and then year after that, Sledgehammer games develops a third and then it’s back to Infinity Ward), this would-be 2023 game is being developed by Treyarch. While Treyarch’s Call of Duty is receiving at least another year of development, Bloomberg’s report says Activision Blizzard will have other projects to fill 2023’s release schedule. 

A new Call of Duty, a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare developed by Infinity Ward, will still be released this year and that’s one pipeline of content Activision Blizzard will have going into 2023. A sequel to free-to-play battle royale Warzone will be released this year as