On reflection, there may be a rationale for the rumour that 2023 could indeed skip a paid Call of Duty title by the publisher owned by Microsoft by then (if the Redmond-based company is allowed to buy it)…

Jason Schreier, writing for Bloomberg, says that Call of Duty could skip a year after 2004, so there would be no new paid game in stores in 2023. Schreier says it wasn’t Microsoft’s idea, but Activision’s executives brought up the idea after the reception to Call of Duty: Vanguard, released last fall, wasn’t that positive.

Of course, it is not known if Activision Blizzard’s management thought of the move whether they already knew about Microsoft acquiring them or not. Still, it is safe to say that there have been examples of below-average reception or rushed development before Call of Duty: Vanguard, and in the past, Ubisoft wisely abandoned its annual Assassin’s Creed release; after 2014’s Unity was, to put it mildly, a disaster at launch…

So what’s the plan? Well, support for the Infinity Ward-developed but as-yet-unconfirmed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone 2 (both due this autumn) may continue, but Treyarch is also reportedly working on a new free-to-play game, and this online project is not related to Warzone. So there are ideas in the background on how to make money for themselves…

A spokesperson for Activision Blizzard sent a statement to WCCFTech. It says: “We have an exciting slate of premium and free-to-play Call of Duty experiences for this year, next year and beyond. Reports of anything otherwise are incorrect. We look forward to sharing more details when the time is right.” So they deny. But there is a rationale behind the rumour. A Call of Duty game usually needs three years of development time. And in the fall of 2020, the pandemic was raging big time. So a F2P idea sounds logical…

Oh, and this is all unofficial, of course.

Source: WCCFTech