There will be a standalone Call of Duty released this year after all
Call of Duty's release plans for 2023 have been the subject of a lot of rumours for the last year or so — ever since it was reported that 2023's main entry from Treyarch was being delayed.
This led to a widespread assumption that Modern Warfare 2, 2022's COD, was going to get a rare two-year period of live-service support, longer than the standard 12-month term.
That thrilled a lot of players (us included) with the idea of a longer tail for the game and more time for it to get really balanced after launch, but recent noise suggests it could be wide of the mark.
It's now being reported that there will be a full Call of Duty in 2023, albeit one that started its life intended as an expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2.
The game will apparently be tied to the Modern Warfare storyline, but seemingly won't necessarily be a full Modern Warfare 3, which leaves a fair amount of ambiguity around what it actually is.
As Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported back in November 2022, this content is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, which has long worked on Call of Duty and last created Vanguard, which undershot its sales expectations.
It would seem that what was at that point a paid expansion is now being billed as a full Call of Duty, though, and Insider Gaming says that this means it'll get the full hype treatment.
Expect beta weekends and campaign early access, then, just like Modern Warfare 2 got, and we'd also wager that it'll tie in with a major update for Warzone 2.0.
Given the lacklustre response to Infinity Ward's post-launch support for Modern Warfare 2 so far, there's a bit of disquiet in the Call of Duty community about a gap in the series' release schedule being filled like this.
Of course, a lot will come down to
Read more on pocket-lint.com
