Call of Duty 2020 might have been revealed as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War through a bag of Doritos, but Activision's Q2 earnings call has revealed fresh information.
As was suspected, we now have confirmation that the game is being developed by both Treyarch Studios and Raven Software, as well as how Warzone has changed the publisher's approach to game reveals.
Call of Duty 2020 Could Be Revealed Through Warzone
As per the earnings call (courtesy of CharlieIntel's reporting), Activision's Rob Kostich explained that "The game [CoD 2020] looks incredible right now, and internally, people are having a ton of fun playing across its campaign mode as well as the online modes that the developers are very well known for. And so, all I can say in terms of timing is I suspect you’ll be hearing more about this fairly soon."
That's big news considering Treyarch's most recent entry, Black Ops 4, did not offer a campaign. Instead, that game focused on including the franchise's first battle royale mode, Blackout, which has now been usurped by Warzone, a free-to-play experience that has proved popular enough to make changes to the way Activision reveals games in the franchise going forward.
"Starting with marketing, it’s [CoD: Warzone] definitely had an impact there and how we think about marketing in this new world," Kostich explained.
"As you see from our results, right now we have a larger, more engaged and more global audience than we’ve ever had at any point in time in our history. And that means we can be more direct and more targeted than we’ve ever been before. So that’s a huge benefit and plus for us when we think about marketing on that vector."
"Another thing I think that is really important for us as it relates to marketing is storytelling, from the storytelling perspective. So, we can be more even more creative, fun, and more engaging with our fans than ever before," he added, likely backs up the inclusion of a campaign in this year's title.
"So if you look at Warzone, in particular, it’s not only a great game experience, but it’s also a great platform for us to share new franchise news and information directly with our community like we haven’t done before"
"So this also a big and positive change for us as we think about the business. And kinda to your initial point you were you talking about why…the waiting for such a long time, we are and we aren’t, but it’s Warzone that's caused us to rethink how, when, and even where we reveal our upcoming titles"