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The new report comes from The Ghost of Hope, a prominent and fairly reliable Call of Duty insider. According to the COD insider, the original plan was to release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — which is said to be making some controversial changes — alongside the next-gen Xbox this year. However, the next-gen Xbox has been delayed. Per the new report, this has torn up the game’s original marketing plans, which were to advertise alongside the new Xbox. Of course, Activision could delay the game to launch with the console later, but that’s not going to happen. Rather, it sounds like a standalone Zombies game may be made and shipped alongside the console instead.
Next-Gen Xbox Messing Up Call of Duty’s Plans
“Sources indicate to me that the delay on the next Xbox has ‘hurt’ a lot of COD’s marketing plans, as they wanted Modern Warfare 4 to be a launch title and draw a lot of hype to compete with people’s attention alongside GTA VI,” reads the report.
The report continues: “Because of this delay, the idea of two Call of Duty games launching with the next Xbox has been floated. A traditional Call of Duty multiplayer and a standalone Zombies title, presumably developed by Treyarch. Likely similar to that of Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered where both released together.
The report concludes by revealing that Microsoft wants Activision and Call of Duty to be more agile and less stuck in its annualized pipeline in the future in order to better capitalize on market trends, noting how the series missed out on the extraction shooter wave because of its inflexible production pipeline.
