This year’s Call of Duty release will be a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare, Activision Blizzard announced today. It will be developed in tandem with a new Warzone release that will be “designed together from the ground up.”
Call of Duty fans can be expect a “all-new playspace and a new sandbox mode” for Warzone 2. Both the Modern Warfare sequel and Warzone will be powered by a new engine.
Let’s start with a look ahead:
✅ COD 2022 is a sequel to MW 2019, and being designed with a new #Warzone experience (both led by @InfinityWard)
✅ A massive evolution of BR, with an all-new playspace and new sandbox mode
✅ A new engine powering both the new game and #Warzone— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) February 11, 2022
Development on both games will once again be led by Infinity Ward, which previously worked on Modern Warfare 2019 and Call of Duty: Warzone. Both games are among the most successful Call of Duty games ever made, with Warzone in particular becoming a major fixture of the battle royale scene.
The Call of Duty 2022 news was released as part of a community update that also includes info for Season 2 of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone. Activision Blizzard is promising more than 30 improvements ahead of the next season’s launch on February 14, including fixes to blockages in Modern Warfare’s multiplayer.
The announcement comes amidst ongoing unionization efforts at Raven Software, a key support studio in the Call of Duty ecosystem. Earlier this year, Raven Software’s QA engineers went on strike to draw attention to their cause.
The future of Call of Duty has also been a key question amid Xbox’s recent Activision Blizzard acquisition. While Infinity Ward did not announce the platforms for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2022 or the new Warzone, Microsoft has promised that Activision Blizzard games will be released on PlayStation “beyond existing agreements,” meaning that PS5 owners can expect to play this year’s releases alongside their compatriots on Xbox Series X|S.
The Entire Raven Software QA Unionization Timeline: The Story So Far
Today’s announcement is a welcome refresh for Warzone in particular, which has dealt with everything from bugs to a cheating epidemic. When Call of Duty: Warzone was released in 2019, we called it an “enjoyable battle royale despite making some serious concessions to depth.” Nevertheless, it was also “teeming with good ideas.” Perhaps Warzone 2 will be an opportunity for Infinity Ward to make good on some of those ideas.
Infinity Ward has not yet announced a release date for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2022 or the new Warzone, but fans can likely expect them sometime in November.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN