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Activision has said it will release a new Call of Duty game this holiday, but does not anticipate the title will repeat the unprecedented success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
“We’ve consistently grown the Call of Duty franchise revenues year-over-year for the past seven years and we expect to continue our strategy annualising franchise opportunity,” said Activision CEO and president Michael Griffith. “At the same time, we’ve recognised that Modern Warfare 2 was an unprecedented success driven in part by the game quality, our retail and marketing execution and by the relatively friendly competitive environment.
“We expect to have a more difficult competitive environment this year and therefore, we have not planned on repeating the same level of success as we enjoyed in 2009. That said, we are still bullish on this year’s title and we do see upside potential if we execute well by engaging the much larger set of consumers, who were introduced to the Call of Duty franchise in 2009.”
Griffith added: “This holiday, as alluded earlier, we plan to release a new Call of Duty game. We expect that the global Call of Duty user base will continue to grow driven by expected high attach rates, new sales of hardware and new downloadable map packs, which should continue to keep current players engaged while also attracting new consumers to the brand.”
Griffith also stated that Activision plans to “explore, analyse and pursue opportunities to expand the brand into new geographies, genres and business models” and will share these plans in the coming months.
Hinting at what Griffith meant, president and CEO Bobby Kotick said: “If you think about the success that we’ve had in other product categories on subscription you can get a sense of the direction that we want to take that franchise.”
Thomas Tippl, CFO and Chief Corporate Officer also suggested that this year’s title isn’t in the hands of Infinity Ward.
“We’ve indicated before that Call of Duty is on a two-year development cycle, given the content and the work that needs to go into a high quality game experience,” he said when questioned about the game’s developer.
