Trouble at Infinity Ward, Activision Refocuses CoD Franchise

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 12:37pm 04/03/10 | 29 Comments

Infinity Ward executives, Jason West and Vince Zampella, have walked away from the company, forcing Activision to go into damage control to appease investors worried it will affect their number one franchise, Call of Duty.

According to reports, everything is still on track for Treyarch's CoD update this year (rumoured to be based on Vietnam), while Infinity Ward are hard at work on DLC for Modern Warfare 2, however, newly formed Sledgehammer Games (made up of ex-Visceral heads) have been put in charge of "development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre", which you can take as you will.

An internal business team has been built to specifically handle the franchise also while Infinity Ward will now be headed up by Activision big wigs, Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich. It has also been confirmed a new title will arrive in 2011 (which we knew would happen anyway), though there's no guarantee this will be delivered or handled by Infinity Ward.

Furthermore, steps have been made to attempt to bring the series to the burgeoning Asian market, which is rapidly embracing online multiplayer gaming - making it a good fit.

Overkill much?

call of duty infinity ward modern warfare 2 multiplayer

Latest Comments

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infi
Posted 12:40pm 04/3/10

They better bring back dedicated servers or they have lost me for good.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 12:41pm 04/3/10

activision running IW is NOT a good thing IMO

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Sc00bs
Posted 12:44pm 04/3/10

no wonder the iwnet servers have been f*****g s***house lately and getting worse.... worst f***** lag u can imagine, after waiting ages to find a game.

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FraktuRe
Posted 12:48pm 04/3/10

activision running IW is NOT a good thing IMO

this. RIP IW.

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Insanernator
Posted 12:50pm 04/3/10

Activision running -insert franchise- is NOT a good thing IMO :) lol

Tim Schafer wins quote of the week - "Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It's just how the beast communicates." - http://twitter.com/timoflegend

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greazy
Posted 12:54pm 04/3/10

You forgot to factor in that the executives decided to leave the company on their own accord.

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ravn0s
Posted 12:56pm 04/3/10

"development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre""development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre"

hmm maybe something like uncharted?

activision probably wants to make cod pay to play

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Insanernator
Posted 01:04pm 04/3/10

Everyone knows how it goes: Quality FPS -> decent FPS -> strange blend of FPS, RPG and/or RTS (they haven't done this stage yet, so look out for Treyarch's next one) -> action/adventure game with BMX and skating sections.

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ViscoS
Posted 01:10pm 04/3/10

Goodbye IW, you gave me some awesome gaming I will never forget.

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Dan
Posted 01:14pm 04/3/10

This is what Activision have on the cards for 2010. All I'll say is that they're damn lucky they have Blizzard.

Blur
Transformers War for Cybertron
Singularity
True Crime

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d^
Posted 01:25pm 04/3/10

What the f*** is this s***? So long Call of Duty.

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cyph
Posted 01:44pm 04/3/10

strange blend of FPS, RPG and/or RTS

I thought that was Battle Zone 2? Blending FPS and RTS games together.

Randomly developed by Pandemic Studios and published by Activision.

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groganus
Posted 02:03pm 04/3/10

They are still investing time in the true crime series.... why bother.

in saying that the first one had a pimp soundtrack full of awesome hip-hop beats.

Also is the news due to the head honchos being marched about my security for breaches in there contracts?

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Crakaveli
Posted 02:17pm 04/3/10

activision probably wants to make cod pay to play

Actually i had read somewhere that Activision was trying to push pay to play for the multiplayer portions of the game.

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supreme
Posted 02:22pm 04/3/10

Actually i had read somewhere that Activision was trying to push pay to play for the multiplayer portions of the game.

if that happens im out.... back to cs i guess

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Viper
Posted 02:35pm 04/3/10

Yea I have heard that the IW head didn't want to charge pay to play on their game and thats why they walked out, would love to hear the details from their side.

Also there was a game that came out awhile ago that let you switch between first person and strategy at any time, can't remember its name though.

I also feel bad for Treyarch because they are still being kept as the "second" developer of the game which no one seems to really take seriously.

On a side note if they even think of trying to charge for online you can bet your bottom dollar they wont see a cent of my money. I won't do it for a MMO and I sure wont do it for COD.

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Raider
Posted 02:49pm 04/3/10

what's with all the good studios fkn going to s*** :|

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 02:58pm 04/3/10

the irony is, Infinity Ward was built from ex-Medal of Honour dudes who hated EA's business practices and drowning of the series in mediocrity through overexposure - history repeats, apparently

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AverageCowboy
Posted 03:45pm 04/3/10

Sweet, hopefully the whole syndication thing busts and sinks like the titanic and then the true developers can move on, form their own company/get seconded into where ever the hell those other two IW dudes are going and then start making games not for money but for quality.

Props.

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Trauma
Posted 03:56pm 04/3/10

no wonder the iwnet servers have been f*****g s***house lately and getting worse.... worst f***** lag u can imagine, after waiting ages to find a game.

The reason your getting lag is because you let it search for ages, it looks for higher latency hosts the longer you allow it to search, I never let it pass 70ms, I just restart the search.

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Trauma
Posted 04:04pm 04/3/10

Yea I have heard that the IW head didn't want to charge pay to play on their game and thats why they walked out, would love to hear the details from their side.

Indeed but they would have been gagged no doubt.

Also there was a game that came out awhile ago that let you switch between first person and strategy at any time, can't remember its name though.

Command and Conquer: Renegade?

I also feel bad for Treyarch because they are still being kept as the "second" developer of the game which no one seems to really take seriously.

I really can't understand why everyone hates on Treyarch, I thought World at War was great, SP was great and the MP was great with Dedi.... win?

On a side note if they even think of trying to charge for online you can bet your bottom dollar they wont see a cent of my money. I won't do it for a MMO and I sure wont do it for COD.

I'm reserving judgment, for any MMO to get me back it would have to be one sweet ass MMOFPS with Aussie servers, so we'll see.

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pimento
Posted 05:27pm 04/3/10

I think it's a bit more than them just 'walking away' from IW. They're now sueing Activision about being fired.

"Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public," attorney Robert Schwartz said, "last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st."

From: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/04/ousted-infinity-ward-founders-file-suit-against-activision/

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Totenkopf
Posted 05:31pm 04/3/10

well they didnt walk away, they got fired, i wonder what really happened.
some ppl say that they got caught playing bad company 2.

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trog
Posted 05:31pm 04/3/10

This is going to get AWESOME! Obviously without all the details about what happened there's going to be a lot of speculation, but it certainly seems like a crazy move on behalf of ATVI to do this.

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Viper
Posted 05:33pm 04/3/10

"The press release announcing the suit claims that Activision was scheduled to pay "substantial royalty payments," but fired them before the date of the payment."

Sounds like they haven't even been paid for MW2, some people just really have no sense of morals.

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eXemplar
Posted 05:57pm 04/3/10

Since when does morality come into business.

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Winston
Posted 06:39pm 04/3/10

Activision used to be cool.

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supreme
Posted 06:43pm 04/3/10

"The press release announcing the suit claims that Activision was scheduled to pay "substantial royalty payments," but fired them before the date of the payment." Sounds like they haven't even been paid for MW2, some people just really have no sense of morals.

if thats true then that is so f***ed up. almost makes me not want to play any more.... alomst.

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Eorl
Posted 06:48pm 04/3/10

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

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