Infinity Ward, creators of the Call of Duty franchise and the acclaimed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, have quickly become one of the most successful development teams on the planet. Still, their success has come from a singular IP, causing Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford to rhetorically ask, "Can you give me something I haven't seen before?"
Today, Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling responded to Videogamer.com and left the door open for Infinity Ward to do something else somewhere down the line.
"When we feel like we can't innovate any further in the Call of Duty franchise, then we'll do something else. A lot of that mentality went into Modern Warfare 2. That's why it's Modern Warfare 2. It is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but you'll never see that in game. We never call it that. It's because we think of this as a new IP. This is our Modern Warfare 2 game. So we are constantly doing new stuff."
"We're doing stuff in this game that you've never seen before, which is awesome," he continued. "We're going to new locations in single player that you've never seen before. We innovate in our own way. But yeah, eventually we'll do something else, and it will be fun and it will be awesome and it will be fresh and it will be great."
While many would assume that work on Modern Warfare 3 has already begun, Bowling claims this isn't the case. "Right now, 100 percent of the team is dedicated on Modern Warfare 2. Honestly we have no clue what our next game is. I'm planning on taking a nap for three months. And then maybe I'll wake up."
While seeing something new from Infinity Ward would be great, right now the Modern Warfare incarnation of Call of Duty is only in its second iteration and is a long way from having grown stale. And considering how huge the franchise is for Activision, you can bet the publisher isn't ready for Infinity Ward to pursue a brand new IP just yet.
