Little is known about Call of Duty 2014; it is actively being developed by Sledgehammer Games and it is the first game in the series to adopt the three year development cycle. This means that instead of just two companies releasing the title every other year, there will be three companies actively developing titles in the Call of Duty franchise: Sledgehammer Games (2014), Treyarch (2015), and Infinity Ward (2016). According to Activision, “this will give our designers more time to envision and to innovate,” which has been the key criticism of the last few installments. Also, Activision Publishing’s CEO Eric Hirshberg stated a few months ago, “Sledgehammer is approaching this as a next-gen-first development… Now that we have the [Xbox One and PS4] out in the marketplace and solid, that is our primary development.”
But besides these brief snippets of information, Sledgehammer Games has not revealed gameplay footage, screenshots, or key features. However, today the first image of Call of Duty 2014 has been exclusively revealed by IGN; supposedly, it is a close up of an in game character model, which makes the reveal quite anti-climactic. This was initially unveiled at last month’s Game Developers Conference 2014 panel, but IGN was only allowed to disclose the image today.
An in game model from Call of Duty 2014.
Obviously, this is a beautiful image; the amount of definition in the soldier’s facial features is quite extraordinary. And this does positively show the capabilities of a three year cycle; but eventually, as more of Call of Duty 2014 is revealed, the general public will want to see the innovations that Activision has promised. Again, it is impossible to please everyone, but will this be the same annually released Call of Duty game? Or will this be a gigantic step in the extremely popular franchise? I do believe the three year development cycle is the first step in the right direction; it is just whether or not the developers will truly act upon the additional time.
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Source: IGN