"Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward." That's the official statement from Activision about yesterday's dismissal. That line is buried in a press release focusing on the future of the Call of Duty series along with these other things:
- Treyarch is developing a Call of Duty game for release this Fall.
- Infinity Ward is currently working on the "first two" downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2.
- Another Call of Duty game will be released in 2011. Shocker!
- Sledgehammer Games, the Activision-owned studio started by Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey--both formerly of EA's Dead Space studio, Visceral Games--is working on a Call of Duty game. This game is going to "extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre."
What?
One Vincent Caravella, when presented with this information, immediately said "so, they're making God of Warfare?" But you can hear that for yourself on tonight's podcast.
Additionally, Activision is forming a new business unit around the Call of Duty franchise to combine resources and bring to COD "the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit." But so far, all of this is starting to sound more like Guitar Hero circa 2009 than anything Blizzard's been doing lately.
Editor's note: The original version of this article misinterpreted the releasse to mean that Sledgehammer's COD game would be released in 2011. No release date for this product has been announced. Giant Bomb regrets the error.
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