With Infinity Ward's founders Jason West and Vince Zampella leaving the company earlier this year amidst a major lawsuit with Activision and Treyarch having set an all-new record with Call of Duty: Black Ops, the argument could be made that Treyarch has taken over as the new lead Call of Duty developer. That would be a false assumption, though, if you ask Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg.
Speaking with IndustryGamers, Hirshberg - who already stressed to us that Activision would never charge for CoD multiplayer - reassured us that Infinity Ward remains an incredibly talented developer and is still very much a part of the Call of Duty world along with Treyarch and Sledgehammer.
"I will say that the Infinity Ward that I’m meeting with today is one of the most talented developers in the world," boasted Hirshberg. "There’s still a lot of talent and a lot of vision inside that studio, and if I had just woken up from a coma and never read a press release about Infinity Ward and just gone to my meetings with them, I would have walked out and said, 'those guys are the real deal'.”
Hirshberg was also effusive in his praise of Treyarch, and rightfully so. They were under immense pressure and they exceeded expectations. "Treyarch is of course going to remain a centerpiece of our efforts on Call of Duty, and they have been. From the beginning, they’ve been contributing. I think that they’ve broke through to another level with this game. I think that they really just put their head down, tuned out the noise, and got to a pretty elite level in terms of the game that they’ve delivered here. They will, of course, figure prominently into our future plans and management of the franchise," he said.
He also is quite confident in what Sledgehammer can do with the franchise: "Sledgehammer, with Glen Schofield and their performance in Dead Space and what they’ve done in the past, I’ve nothing but high hopes for their contributions."
"We’ve got an unprecedented level of talent contributing to this franchise," he concluded.
We'll have more from our Hirshberg interview soon.
4 Comments
December 14, 2010
While the clamor around IW has died down, Activision has thrown out occasionally reassuring coos that everything is fine and nothing is broken. Proof will be in the pudding, I suppose, a little less than a year from now when IW's next project comes out.
December 15, 2010
IW is two years right? Sledgehammer is getting the next title, so IW's turn will be after than.
December 15, 2010
I thought Sledgehammer was brought in to make the series iterate more often than once a year? Nothing's been announced yet as to when and what the next Call of Duty is, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
December 16, 2010
I think that the real test will come when a new Call of Duty engine needs to be created.