New Call of Duty Devs Aim to “Broaden the Audience”
When a new Call of Duty was announced to be hitting later this year, it was certainly a surprise as to who would be developing it. So far during this generation of consoles, the Call of Duty series has had annual releases, alternating between developers Treyarch (COD3, COD: World at War) and Infinity Ward (COD4: Modern Warfare and MW2), however, Sledgehammer Games will take the reigns of the next installment in the COD series. Despite having some massive shoes to fill, Sledgehammer seeks to take the franchise to new heights even claiming the title “will broaden the audience”.
Activision COO Thomas Tippi spoke to LA Times, where he revealed that the company will bring a new take into the Call of Duty series.
Today, we have three studios working on Call of Duty. We have Infinity Ward, which made Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Then we have Treyarch, which will be releasing a Call of Duty game in the fall of 2010. Treyarch also developed Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty 3.
And, most recently, we’ve added Sledgehammer in the Bay Area. We haven’t yet announced the content of their game, but it’s going to be an innovative take that will further broaden the audience for Call of Duty.
Tippi explains the current position about the West and Zampella saga:
We treat our developers extremely well. We have an independent studio model that provides them a lot of creative freedom while we take care of the back office stuff so they can focus on making games. If their games are successful, they are compensated better here than anywhere else. We’ve been paying our talent millions of dollars for their work. Our setup provides a win-win opportunity. We ensure your work will reach a wide audience. Therefore, we have attracted, and we will continue to attract, the top talent in this industry.
Sledgehammer Games Call of Duty is categorized under the action-adventure genre, rather than the FPS genre.
13 Responses to “New Call of Duty Devs Aim to “Broaden the Audience””
That’s like trying to broaden the waist line of Fat Albert… how much more can you possible go?
Kewl new dev and new hings.. Treyarch wasn’t that great imo hopefully sledgehammer is better.
Infinity Ward is on life support from those other studios. I hope this all blows up in Activision’s face.
translation: “We finna milk this for all its worth
I hate activision they always ruin cod games hope they don’t mess Vietnam up >:(
broaden the audience = piece of garbage, how do you broaden the audience of the most popular FPS franchise without drastically changing part of the formula?? You don’t. Maybe they will change it for the better, but “broaden the audience” usually means make it a casual piece of crap from my experience. My guess is they will use motion controls to try and compete with SOCOM 4 but since they are trying to appeal to a larger audience it will probably be more like a Wii game than a hardcore shooter like SOCOM will be.
F**k you kotick, burn in hell. I haven’t bought a single COD game so far and I don’t plan in doing so in the future.
hey maybe now that halo is making reach more like COD maybe COD is making their game more like halo. see what I did there. lol I would love to pump you full of bullets and still have to knife you to finish u off
LOL, 100 employees at $10,000 a year = 1 million dollars. Those lucky guys!!!
I guess they ran Guitar Hero into the ground by releasing so many games that everybody got sick to death of it, might as well do the same with COD. Wait until the Move is released, and about 5 seconds later these guys announce their $40 plastic machine gun peripheral.
personally I don’t care who develops it because I won’t buy it — if they had done more to make online play fair and balanced in past ( and present ) c.o.d. games and stop the constant cheating it would be different but when a primarily online game isn’t fun online that ruins it
I can think of a couple of ways to broaden the audience though , make it use the ps move , make it play as either 1st or 3rd person for those who prefer either type , and make 2 versions with one being censored for underage kids and another m rated – so more parents will buy it for their kids — not that kids don’t already play it but with another option for good parents who wouldn’t allow their child to play a fps they’d sell more ( just make the censored version offline multiplayer only )
Dumb down and already dumbed down franchise….yay….
@Timewarp good for you , no one cares though , since cod is one of the most popular games
@Jasx501 iw is going to be just fine they’ll have an extra year to hire new ppl for iw and premote people with in , mw3 in 2012.
its just stupid peopel who hate the cod series feel the need to bash it every story they see about it. some ppl need to get a life.
@abercrombieco2: umm i happen to have cod:waw and mw2, and i think they both are so basic its not funny, IW is screwed massively seeing as most of the company has moved over to respawn games or have just left, IW wont make another cod game, but if they do it will be low quality seeing as the best talent at iw is gone, they should have put an extra year into mw2 and made the story longer and worked out all the bugs, but activision decided they wanted the money NOW!
and i am not stupid, but i will bash mw2 every chance i get because it is a ridiculous game, anyone with half a brain can see the loopholes in the story, how unfair the online multiplayer is, and how stupidly short the storyline is so i think it may be you that is the stupid one!