New Call of Duty Confirmed for Later This Year

In the most surprising news of 2020, today Activision confirmed that a new Call of Duty game is releasing later this year. The surprise confirmation came during the company's earnings call, where it talked not only about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but the future of the best-selling and long-running first-person shooter series. As you would expect, this is where the salient details dried up. When in 2020 it will release wasn't divulged, nor was a name or what developer is working on it. That said, what Activision did note is that the new title is "generating high interest internally." In other words, early play tests of the game have been very positive, and as a result, Activision "feels great about the content" that the game will come packing.

Interestingly, the publisher also made a note to investors that it does not expect this new installment to generate as much revenue as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare did last year when it hit PS4, Xbox One, and PC in October. However, it said the same thing about last year's game compared to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, so this may be just be Activision exercising some caution in front of investors.

While Activision has declined to divulge any official details on the game, we do have unofficial details. Last year, Kotaku reported that 2020's game would be Call of Duty: Black Ops 5 from Treyarch Studios, after Sledgehamer and Raven Software's 2020 Call of Duty game was internally canned. According to the report, this title was going to be set during the Cold War, and would likely involve the Vietnam War as well.

The report further claims that both studios will still be on Call of Duty 2020, but only as support studios. Meanwhile, it's understand that within Treyarch there's some displeasure over the situation, as it will lead to a rushed product, which usually means crunching as well.

That all said, for now, this is all unofficial information. Officially, all we know is a new Call of Duty game is releasing this year, presumably for PS4, Xbox One, PC, as well as next-gen consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X).