Some players have been finding it funny how Treyarch and Infinity Wards swapped places. Treyarch’s first entry into the series got the reputation of the “worst Call of Duty” for its time, and players were skeptical about “Black Ops” later, but actually ended up enjoying it a lot.
And then “Black Ops 2” came out at a time when it was clear that Infinity Ward was just a shell of its former self, further solidifying Treyarch’s position as the top developer for the franchise. Sledgehammer, who were brought in to work on “Advanced Warfare”, seemed to handle their job quite well too, so now it will be a competition between these two studios primarily.
What does this mean for Infinity Ward? There was initially some speculation that Sledgehammer’s introduction into the series means that Activision are looking to drop the other studio, but the case was quite the opposite.
It appears that Activision want to give each studio more time to work on their respective game, as having three studios instead of two means that each installment will have three years for its development, and not two. Hopefully all studios are going to put the extra time to good use – for what it’s worth, it looks like Treyarch are way ahead of everyone else and have been spending their time quite productively.