It’s now July (terrifying, I know) and Activision still hasn’t announced Call of Duty 2020, a release date, or what the game even might be. Speculation is rife that it’s a Black Ops reboot with the old Blackout Battle Royale on its way back, but will the game come this year at all?
The last Call of Duty to have its release date so late in the year was Call of Duty: World At War. A classic, by all merits, but a game that was notoriously broken, buggy and full of hackers at launch. It was like they didn’t want to release the game at all.
While the speculation carries on, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare continues to go from strength to strength. Its player base is still enormous, with the brand new 200-player Warzone mode a testament to that.
It also continues to receive consistent updates, content drops and new Seasonal content. Players and members of the Call of Duty community have said that they’d rather continue playing Modern Warfare into the new year, and into the next-gen of consoles.
This, of course, goes against the very fibre of Activision and the Call of Duty franchise. With an annual release every year for over the last decade, this would be the first year in a long time that Call of Duty wasn’t re-released yet again.
But it does make some sense if there is no Call of Duty 2020. First, the global pandemic is a good excuse as any for Activision to put the brakes on a brand new Call of Duty.
After the wild success of Modern Warfare, the new Call of Duty would have to be some game to unseat its predecessor, and the working climate in 2020 just hasn’t been suitable to produce anything on time.
Then there’s the issue of the next Battlefield game. Battlefield and Call of Duty have always competed during the holiday release period and after the widely agreed failure of Battlefield V, DICE and EA are likely going to come back with a bang.
Then lastly, there’s the question of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare itself. There’s no doubt it has been one of the most successful CoD games in recent years and with its frequent updates and much-loved Warzone Battle Royale, there might just not be a good enough reason to split the player base.
Though this is Activision, and the thought of them not releasing a Call of Duty game this year verges on impossible.
