Glen Schofield, the “Dead Space” creator and director of three Sledgehammer Games-produced installments in the “Call of Duty” franchise (2011’s MW3, 2014’s Advanced Warfare, 2017’s WWII), says he’s ‘immensely worried’ about the franchise’s future.
Schofield, who left Sledgehammer in 2019 before going on to make “The Callisto Protocol” at Kraften, spoke to VGC at Gamescom Asia this week and thinks the fate of “Call of Duty” under Activision’s new owners Microsoft is concerning.
Schofield wonders if the Xbox maker’s corporate culture will be compatible with the teams behind the games in the long term, and cites some of Xbox’s most notable franchises which have declined in popularity recently:
“I worry about it immensely, I really do. Because what’s happening to Gears of War, where’s Halo… you know what I mean? And you look at EA, you look at these big companies, and I’m like where’s the Strike games? Where’s this game? And there’s so many that just fall by the wayside.
Unfortunately, once you’re assimilated by one of these companies, I think you take on some of their traits. The other thing is, I don’t know, but I would imagine that the Call of Duty bonus system is out, and now you have theirs, and people are going to go ‘that isn’t that’.”
Microsoft acquired the “Call of Duty” franchise as part of its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023. The first entry released under the new ownership was last year’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” which launched day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft declared it the biggest ‘Duty’ launch ever in terms of players, but the game also saw a sharper post-launch decline than usual and others have subsequently estimated the company lost hundreds of millions by putting the title on Game Pass on Day One.
Schofield says the exit of key staff, and the drop in quality of recent titles despite robust sales, is also of concern: “They just aren’t as good. They aren’t the same. Treyarch’s still really good but you know”.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 7” is due to release on November 14th.
