Here’s a press release that just went out. The only juicy thing it says about the recent Infinity Ward kerfuffle is that Vince Zampella and Jason West are no longer with the company — which was assumed based on the reports and their LinkedIn/Facebook pages, but it’s now confirmed by Activision. As I suspected, nothing else is said about why or what really happened, and because it’s going to have legal tendrils that deal with private personnel issues, I don’t expect to hear anything else about that soon. People’s minds will no doubt wander but it’s the nature of these kind of situations that the public is left in the dark.
But everything else in this surprisingly rich press release should raise some eyebrows. Highlights include:
- Activision is starting a new business division for future Call of Duty games. This unit is being built “with the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit” and “will include a focus on high-margin digital online content.” I know there are rumors about an MMO based on COD, and I have not heard anything to suggest that those rumors were true, but if you put the concepts of “like Blizzard” and “online content” together, I can see where those rumors will gain steam. (I still personally don’t think it’s going to be an MMO, but that’s my guess based on the lack of historical success for FPS MMOs and little else.)
- A COD title for 2011 is confirmed — before we even know what COD 2010 is. Kinda “duh” to people who notice that games come out on an annual basis, but still — considering how close to the vest Activision plays things, this is interesting.
- Treyarch is now confirmed as this year’s COD developer — which, again, most people suspected based on historical examples. But at least that is now fact.
- Sledgehammer Games — the Bay Area studio made up of ex-Dead Space developers — is working on a COD action/adventure title. I wondered what they were cooking up; I had kind of hoped they might be reviving Phantasmagoria or something creepy to play into their recent success.
- The MW2 DLC currently in development is still coming out and will not be affected. Saw a lot of people wondering about this when the IW drama unfolded, so that’s a relief.
- A few of Activision’s internal people are heading over to IW to oversee operations in the interim.
- Activision is looking to start selling games in Asia. Few companies have had major success with this (you may remember how hard Microsoft fought for Xbox acceptance in Japan) but Blizzard is one of them, so I’m curious to see how this unfolds.
That’s all the news so far. I’ll update if there’s more. If I can clarify anything, hit me in the comments below.
