Some of Activision Blizzard’s top brass is reportedly considering moving away from annual releases for the Call of Duty franchise.
In the wake of Microsoft’s announcement to acquire Activision Blizzard, a new report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier states that Activision executives have discussed dropping annual releases for Call of Duty. “High-level employees at Activision have discussed moving away from the annual release schedule, according to two people familiar with the discussions,” the report reads.
Bloomberg says that nothing has been finalised, but “there’s a belief among many Call of Duty developers that releasing games at a slower cadence will please players and help bolster the franchise.” This comes after the latest entry into the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Vanguard, saw particularly poor sales.
In recent months, the majority of Activision developers have been pulled from their projects to work on Call of Duty. If Activision does decide to move away from an annual release for Call of Duty, then hopefully, we’ll get some more interesting titles from the publisher. Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently said that if the acquisition closes, Microsoft will talk to teams at the publisher about working on some of Activision Blizzard’s older franchises.