Third studio brought into to develop a new Call of Duty game

* newsitem courtesy of Jack Bebee

Modern Warfare 2 generated a record-setting $550 million in sales for its launch, best for not only video games but also movies at the box office. According to a publisher at Activision Blizzard it was estimated that the game sold 8 million copies on day of release. The game cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, it was said to “cost about as much as a mid-size film.” Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, which is extremely high for any video game.

It has also been reported by the LA Times that Call of Duty have a third studio to help out further developments of the game series. Activision's two-studio system of being able to release annual instalments of  Call of Duty has been a great success, first studio being Infinity-Ward, who have been concentrating on the Modern Warfare series for the past few years releasing 2 best-sellers, while the second studio Treyarch has been focusing on its World War II games. However, it has been told that Treyarch will be releasing next years title of the series which is rumoured to be set in the Cold War.

Activision have declined all requests of identifying the third studio, but better question yet, what exactly will their role be? The studio will only be working on “future versions of the game”. This may include games for the current mainstream systems such as Consoles and PC but this could also be the new studio for Mobile gaming, such as the iPhone game just released 'Call of Duty: Zombies'. Another possibility is a MMO Call of Duty Spin off which was rumoured last year. This is news that has only been recently touched upon, hopefully in the next year Call of Duty will have a lot more exciting ideas for us beloved fans.