Those at Activision have come under fire for having become complacent in success, and not innovating the series enough. The question is largely at debate whether the next Call of Duty will change things up or even whether it needs to, but one thing is for sure: Activision cares deeply about the future of its biggest franchise.

Two internal memos were sent to employees concerning the temporary closure of the Guitar Hero franchise, the cancellation of True Crime: Hong Kong, and the future of Call of Duty. One of the memos, following a question and answer format, posed the question, “Isn’t Call of Duty today just like Guitar Hero was a few years back?”  Activision CEO, Eric Hirschberg, responded with:

He goes on to explain the differences between Guitar Hero and Call of Duty:

He makes a good point, as the FPS genre has only become more and more popular as time goes on. However, Hirschberg knows that they cannot become too comfortable with their success if they plan to keep it. He explains how Call of Duty will retain its power:

He’s heard the opinions on how Call of Duty fails to be innovative, and he responds saying that they are innovative.

The “list of projects” he mentions? These are things like Bungie’s new franchise, of which almost nothing is known (although they have put out beta test invites), the “Beachhead” service designed augment Call of Duty’s online presence, a free-to-play, microtransaction-based Call of Duty designed for the Chinese market, Call of Duty extensions that “are more complex and have more potential on their own than most stand alone console games.”

While Activision has been mum on the details, we know there will be details on the next Call of Duty soon.

Black Ops proved that one doesn’t have to change something if it isn’t broken, and ended up outdoing any other game, while not changing very much at all. Hirschberg talks about staying ahead of the curve, so does that mean we can see some changes in the next game? They already took some fire for not only not bringing a new game engine to the table when compared to Battlefield 3, but for saying they don’t see the point. We don’t know, but we can be sure that Activision will be working hard to keep milking their cash cow, and keep it alive and on top for as long as they possibly can.

Source: Giant Bomb