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Activision Retains Call of Duty Branding for Modern Warfare 2

Posted July 9, 2009 by James Brightman

Infinity Ward's latest should be huge

Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling has revealed (via Twitter) the first images of box art for the developer's much anticipated Modern Warfare 2. Curiously, as you can clearly see from the image posted to the right, the game will indeed feature the Call of Duty branding on it. It doesn't appear as prominently as Modern Warfare 2 itself, but it's there nonetheless.

There had been some thinking that Infinity Ward wanted to more clearly separate its franchise from Treyarch's Call of Duty titles, but the franchise as a whole has been doing phenomenally well for Activision, regardless of developer, and the suits at Activision Blizzard no doubt did not want to take any risk with the release of Modern Warfare 2 this holiday by eliminating the familiar Call of Duty name from the packaging.

Activision is expecting Modern Warfare 2 to "dominate" the holiday season, and the publisher used the game's release as an excuse to push back its new IP Singularity into the 2010 March quarter.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.