Activision has officially confirmed that the new Call of Duty: Warzone is in development and will be revealed later this year.
The announcement was made as part ofActivision Blizzard’s Q1 2022 financial results, where it was claimed that the newWarzonewill be built from scratch alongside the next main Call of Duty game, which is a new Modern Warfare.
“The Call of Duty teams delivered substantial gameplay improvements forVanguardand Warzone in the first quarter,”Activision‘s statement read. “Development on this year’s premium and Warzone experiences, led byInfinity Ward, is proceeding very well.
“This year’s Call of Duty is a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare, the most successful Call of Duty title to date, and will be the most advanced experience in franchise history.
“The new free-to-play Warzone experience, which is built from the ground-up alongside the premium game, features groundbreaking innovations to be revealed later this year.”
Since Activision has referred to the new Modern Warfare as a sequel, but simply referred to the next Warzone as a “new experience”, it’s not yet clear if the new Warzone will be a completely new release or a major update to the existing Warzone.
As firstreported by VGCback in September last year, Modern Warfare 2’s campaign will be centred around the drug war against Columbian cartels.
Sources said the single-player story is “a grittier take on Modern Warfare 2019’s campaign”, with more close-quarters combat, tricky decision making, and the classic Call of Duty set-piece moments fans have come to expect.
We also previously reported that Modern Warfare 2 will release alongside a brand new map for Warzone, the third such all-new arena to be launched for the battle royale spin-off.
As with Verdansk, which is based on Modern Warfare 2019, and Caldera, which launched shortly after last year’s Vanguard, the new MW2 Warzone map will be comprised of various classic points of interest, it was claimed.
During a conversation with Call of Duty influencers in February, Infinity Ward stated that future integrations of Call of Duty titles into Warzoneshould be smoothernow that all teams working on Call Of Duty are working on the same engine.
Further reading
Modern Warfare 2’s reveal could be imminent, as last week Infinity Ward went dark’ on social media, changing its profile pics and header images to what initially appears to be complete darkness.
However, when enhanced, the images reveal what appears to be the silhouette of the fan favourite character Ghost, who first appeared in the original 2009 Modern Warfare 2.
If Ghost is indeed in the next game, he may not be voiced by the same actor as in the previous game.
Jeff Leach voiced Ghost in 2019’sCall of Duty: Modern Warfare, butActivision has stated that he is no longer involved with the seriesafter a series of misogynist comments recently resurfaced online.
