New Call of Duty takes ‘next-gen first’ approach to development

The new Call of Duty game — as in the one that's being developed by Sledgehammer Games — will be made primarily for next-gen consoles. Speaking to IGN, Activision's publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, shed some light on Sledgehammer's approach to developing the new Call of Duty.

"Sledgehammer is approaching this as a next-gen first development," Hirshberg said.

“Obviously in the console-transition year, anyone who developed a cross-generational game last year had to deal with the fact that the technology of the next-gen platforms was still coming into focus and changing quite a bit during the development process," he added. "Now that we have the next-gen hardware out in the marketplace and solid, that is our primary development."

Last week, Activision announced plans to switch to a three-year development cycle for its popular first-person shooter franchise. The series was previously on a two-year cycle with Infinity Ward and Treyarch alternating development every other year. This year would've been Treyarch's turn. Activision's hope is that with more time the quality of will begin to improve. Although sales for Call of Duty: Ghosts were impressive, the game failed to live up to the success of its predecessors both in terms of reviews and sales.

Hopefully with a focus on development for the PS4 and Xbox One, the new Call of Duty will feel more like a next-gen title. I think we can all agree Ghosts still had a very last-gen feel to it.