A multi-billion dollar franchise, Call of Duty means big money for Activision, but the publisher is well aware of the fact that gamer’s tastes can abruptly change, and that a series can quickly lose appeal. That’s why Activision are keen to capitalize on their success and pump out as many iterations of the franchise as quickly as they can, despite the fact that the very process of rushing out the games helps speed up franchise apathy.
Activision has revealed to VentureBeat that it has more than 500 developers working on Call of Duty simultaneously, with the work split between four or five studios depending on what stage games are at. In fact, if a mass exodus of Infinity Ward workers hadn’t meant that Sledgehammer Games had to help the remaining developers finish Modern Warfare 3, they would have also created a third person Call of Duty games.
While it’s understandable that Activision wants to maximize their profits, the Modern Warfare could suffer the same crash that Guitar Hero faced, something that ultimately caused the publisher to end the franchise.
