Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s single-player marketing campaign was panned by critics when it launched early on November 2. Reviewers hit it with low scores and mentioned it felt quick, rushed, and incomplete. Now Bloomberg reviews that the sport was rushed out in half the time of a traditional Call of Duty sequel, with devs working nights and weekends to fulfill Activision’s annualized gross sales targets.
According to Bloomberg, the sport was initially pitched to Sledgehammer builders as an growth to Modern Warfare II that will give attention to missions based mostly in Mexico as an alternative of the sequence’ regular globetrotting set-pieces. In the summer season of 2022, nevertheless, Activision executives apparently rebooted the venture as a full-fledged sequel concerning the Modern Warfare II villain Vladimir Makarov. The firm wanted to fill the hole left by an obvious delay of Treyarch’s subsequent Call of Duty recreation, and reportedly determined towards merely taking a yr off from the blockbuster’s annual launch schedule.
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A spokesperson for Activision denied this, nevertheless. Sledgehammer Games studio head Aaron Halon informed Bloomberg in an interview that the builders who thought Modern Warfare III had initially been deliberate as an growth have been merely confused as a result of it was a “new sort of direct sequel,” regardless of the PlayStation 5 model of the sport showing as DLC on the trophies menu and asking some gamers to insert the Modern Warfare II disc.
But greater than a dozen present and former Call of Duty builders informed Bloomberg that Halon’s take “conflicted” with what they have been initially informed. Some of them additionally seemingly labored nights and weekends to try to get Modern Warfare III out on time, regardless of the sport solely having half the event time of a traditional Call of Duty sequel. “They felt betrayed by the corporate as a result of they have been promised they wouldn’t should undergo one other shortened timeline after the discharge of their earlier recreation, Call of Duty: Vanguard, which was made beneath a equally constrained growth cycle,” Bloomberg reviews.
Call of Duty has made billions for Activision, however the sequence has an extended and increasingly-well-documented observe document of burning out its builders. One of the massive questions dealing with the franchise now that Microsoft owns it (after just lately closing its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard) is whether or not it’s going to proceed the seemingly unsustainable growth cycles or let the blockbuster take a yr off for the primary time in a long time.
