Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg believes that the decision to extend Call Of Duty development cycle to 3 instead of 2 years have already paid off in terms of more creative design and higher quality.
"That extra year of development time, particularly with the new consoles and the more powerful hardware, has really paid off thus far to iterate, innovate and try new things," he said. "To find out which things didn't work and have the freedom to fail in the creative process, so what goes on the disc is the best ideas."
New Call Of Duty titles will continue to be released annually as three separate development teams are working on three different games simultaneously to be released in cascade. The first Call Of Duty was released in 2004 to great success thanks to its innovation and quality. Eleven other main iterations have been released since then, each one with diminishing returns. Fingers crossed, the expanded development cycle would give the series the breathing room it needs.