Call of Duty Warzone
Toys for Bob, developer of the remake of the Spyro trilogy and the recent Crash Bandicoot 4 It's About Time, will support the development of Call of Duty Warzone Season 3. "Toys for Bob is proud to support development for Warzone season 3, and we can't wait for more to come", tweeted the official profile of the software house, implying the arrival of other development teams to support the Activision Blizzard's battle royale. Theory later confirmed by the creative director of the title, Amos Hodge, to the microphones of VGC: “All the studios are helping us“.The huge success of the game has therefore pushed Activision Blizzard to bet all its strength on it. As stated by a former Toys for Bob designer, Nicholas Kole, the publisher would have decided to exploit the remaining resources of the software house, following a long line of layoffs, to support Raven Software. Economically speaking, it is a more than obvious decision; but what will happen to the other projects under the wing of Activision Blizzard, if all development studies are focused on supporting Call of Duty? In short, a decision that is also controversial, examining it from this point of view.
The Season 3 of Call of Duty Warzone will therefore aim to further evolve the free-to-play developed by Raven. Rob Kostich, President of Activision Blizzard said in conjunction with the launch: “Season 3 brings with it not only a transformation of the map to the year 1984, but also a huge amount of content and new updates, many of which are already at launch. . Not only that, we also plan to bring lots of free content for Black Ops Cold War. Today is truly a day to remember for gamers and our community. There is much more to come this season and in the coming months, get ready! ".
Glad to have you on the project with us! 🤜🤛
- Raven Software (@RavenSoftware) April 29, 2021
Will Activision Blizzard reevaluate its decision? In order not to miss anything about it, we invite you to stay tuned with us at Game Division. In the meantime, check out our complete guide to Returnal, Housemarque's exclusive PlayStation.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is available at a great price on Amazon Italy.
Effectively Every Activision Studio Is Now Feeding The ‘Call Of Duty’ Machine
Warzone
ATVIYou may have noticed that despite being one of the largest software-only video game publishers in the world, Activision does not…release all that many games. They make Call of Duty, every year, they have Blizzard working on games that do not come out very often at all, and they have King, their mobile games acquisition/money printer.
There have been running jokes about Activision essentially being little more than a Call of Duty machine these days but…it’s not really a joke.
This week, it was announced that Toys for Bob, a studio who has worked on Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, was both undergoing layoffs and being retasked with supporting Call of Duty Warzone going forward.
Now, it seems like there may not be any Activision sub-studios that are not actively working on Call of Duty.
In addition to Toys for Bob, that includes the obvious big guns like Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer, but also Raven, Beenox, Demonware and High Moon. Vicarious Visions has now been absorbed into Blizzard.
It’s kind of wild to put so much stock in a single franchise, but Activision is married to this model where they must get a new Call of Duty out every year. But the cracks are starting to show. They used to have this down with a three studio rotation, giving each game enough time between new Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer and Treyarch releases, but things have changed. The last Sledgehammer game had to be scrapped and a new Black Ops had to be finished early. And on top of that, they now have the hugely popular Warzone battle royale mode to constantly update and keep current, so they need more help with that. Enter: every single studio they have, essentially.
Call of Duty
IWIt’s a rather stunning situation that is not really comparable to other mega-studios in the same league like EA or 2K or Ubisoft which juggle multiple franchises at a time with all their different developers. Activision’s frustration with Blizzard not being able to get new games out in a timely fashion has been apparent for a while now, as they’re used to annualized Call of Duty content and Blizzard having no games out other than remasters since Overwatch in 2016 feels like an eternity.
I mean, it’s…working? Call of Duty still manages to be the best-selling game of the year, every year, at least when a new Grand Theft Auto isn’t coming out. Warzone has been a massive hit since launch. So I can see why it would make sense for them to double down on this philosophy, especially with Blizzard still taking ages to release anything on their end (not that I blame them, and I don’t think they should rush anything that isn’t ready).
Still, it’s fundamentally disquieting to see a studio like Toys for Bob shed workers and then move from Spyro and Crash to Warzone, just like it was not great to see Vicarious Visions vacuumed up into Blizzard. These are studios that should be given license to start building their own IPs, rather than feeding decades-old franchises. I’m not sure how sustainable this is long term, but we’ll have to see. For now, the machine is humming along.
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