Insider claims Call of Duty could see a massive shake-up including no more annual releases

For pretty much its entire existence, Call of Duty has operated using a familiar model, with the FPS franchise seeing a brand new title released on an annual basis from one of the 3 core COD studios. While this has worked in the past, Black Ops 7 seems to have been a breaking point for some. According to known insiders, Microsoft is now considering a major shake-up, including a standalone Zombies game.

As reported by known Call of Duty leaker TheGhostofHope, an internal delay of the next-gen Xbox console from Microsoft has “hurt a lot of CODs marketing plans as they wanted Modern Warfare 4 to be a launch title and draw a lot of hype to compete with people's attention alongside GTA VI.”

According to Hope, this has led to “the idea of two Call Of Duty games launching with the next Xbox” being considered – namely “a traditional Call of Duty multiplayer and a standalone Zombies title presumably developed by Treyarch.”

Alongside this, Microsoft is reportedly wanting “Activision to be more agile and less attached to annualized releases in the future,” with one example of its failings being the lack of evolution in MW2’s DMZ extraction mode due to it being attached to an annual COD entry.

Of course, Microsoft and Xbox are in a weird spot at the moment, so these plans could be altered or changed at any point.

Still, considering just how rigidly the franchise has stuck to its annual releases up until now, it would be interesting to see what Treyarch, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games could achieve if given enough time and freedom. Hopefully we find out.

KitGuru says: What do you think of this leak? Would you welcome a shift in strategy? Between a standalone DMZ and Zombies game, which would you prefer? Let us know down below.

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