Although Activision Blizzard (or should we say Microsoft?) is not yet ready to stop releasing a new Call of Duty game every year, the company may have already taken a step in that direction.

The lack of interest in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 continues to affect the long-running franchise. Activision announced on its blog that it will no longer release consecutive Call of Duty games in the same sub-series. This announcement follows a weaker-than-usual year for the franchise, with Black Ops 7 released just one year after Black Ops 6. In 2023, there was the reimagined Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, released just a year after the 2022 reimagining of Modern Warfare 2. This repetition caused fatigue among some players, which Activision indirectly cited as one of the factors in today’s decision.

“We will no longer release Modern Warfare or Black Ops games back-to-back. The reasons are many, but the main one is to ensure we provide an absolutely unique experience each and every year. We will drive meaningful innovation, not incremental innovation. While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right. To be clear, the future of Call of Duty is very strong, and we believe that our best days are ahead of us, given the depth and talent of our development teams. We have been building the next era of Call of Duty, and it will deliver precisely what you want, along with surprises that will push the franchise and the genre forward. We look forward to welcoming you, listening to you, and moving forward together,” the blog post reads.

Although the company has confirmed its commitment to supporting seasonal updates for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — the first of which is already underway — the tone of the announcement aligns with previous admissions that Activision mishandled Black Ops 7 and aims to regain players’ trust. This process began before the game’s release when beta feedback prompted the developers to relax skill-based matchmaking and cancel planned crossover cosmetics, which was an attempt to remedy the epidemic of Call of Duty ugliness.

While creating unique games every year is a positive step, it doesn’t address the root cause of CoD fatigue: annual releases. This approach didn’t benefit Assassin’s Creed either. Period.

Source: PCGamer, Call of Duty