Despite Activision's insistence that everything is hunky-dory at Infinity Ward post West and Zempella's firings, it turns out the developer may have had to bring on board some extra outside talent to reign in the third installment in the Modern warfare series, which was initially penned a trilogy by the former IW heads.

While speculation (even from me) suggested Sledgehammer Games (made up of ex-Visceral heads) would be working on a futuristic iteration of Call of Duty to be announced and released this year in November (the franchise's annual launch window) The Los Angeles Times has revealed that people "close to the situation" report a different scenario.

Activision has quietly tapped Sledgehammer Games, a Northern California studio, to help out with the making of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, according to people familiar with the situation. The game has not been officially announced by Activision. But the title is well into production and is expected to come out in November, the same month that the publisher has annually released a new Call of Duty installment, people with knowledge of situation said.

They also cite their sources as pin-pointing Raven Software to be working on the online multiplayer component of the game.

Obviously Raven's last two outings were anything but successful, both critically and commercially, and it's been a long time since anything Triple A has come out of their doors. It's also interesting that they didn't just share Treyarch, who did a bang-up job on the multiplayer portion of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

If all of the above is indeed true, the blockbuster status of Modern Warfare may be in jeopardy, and I'd suggest Acti goes back to letting Sledgehammer Games release their futuristic CoD this year, and give Infinity Ward at least another year to adjust.