Expect a new Call of Duty and more remasters from Activision this year

In unsurprising news, there will be a new Call of Duty game this year. Activision COO Coddy Johnson confirmed as much during the company's Q4 2019 financial results call today, teasing that playtests have already "generated excitement".

We don't know who's developing it, but it's unlikely to be Infinity Ward. That studio shipped the Modern Warfare reboot late last year, which Activision claims sold dramatically better than its predecessor, Black Ops 4, to the tune of a "double-digit percentage" increase (a summary of the call can be found here). That said, the company isn't expecting this year's instalment to perform quite as well, but it didn't specify why.

During the same call, CEO Bobby Kotick indicated that more remasters are in the pipeline following the successes of the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro remakes. But they won't all be remakes per se: "Stay tuned for some future announcements, but beyond pure remasters there are a lot of opportunities now to innovate and think about totally new content within these IPs." A Pitfall remake, maybe? In the mold of Uncharted? We're all desperate for a cinematic Pitfall game, right?

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. During the same call, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack acknowledged that Warcraft 3: Reforged hasn't had the smoothest of launches.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.