Call of Duty 2022: Infinity Ward and Activision start teasing 'new generation' CoD

Activision has made no secret of the fact Call of Duty: Vanguard sales didn't meet expectations. One could argue that the appetite for WW2-themed games has waned in recent years, although one could also argue that Call of Duty itself is saturating its own market. As demands for infinitely-increasing content continue, faced with competition from itself with Warzone and others like Apex Legends and Fortnite, it's perhaps something of a relief for Activision that EA's competing Battlefield 2042 turned out to be such a disaster, and Halo Infinite has yet to receive new content.

Call of Duty: Vanguard has improved since launch, with many bugs fixed, server stability improved, and so on. Activision has already teased what fans can expect from CoD: Vanguard's next season as well. Now, Activision and Infinity Ward are teasing the next Call of Duty too, likely slated for the holiday season of 2022.

The mention of "new generation" has been taken by some to indicate that past-gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One may be cut off from this year's Call of Duty, but that's as of yet unconfirmed. What is confirmed is that Infinity Ward is at the helm. The legendary studio is arguably responsible for blowing up the franchise back in the day with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and it seems entirely likely that the next CoD will take on a modern-day or near-future styling.

Call of Duty has a bit of an existential crisis revolving around it. It's a bit tough to innovate when you're tasked to build a new take on the aging franchise year in, year out, which has led some to postulate whether or not Microsoft may drop the forced annualization of the franchise. Indeed, if you missed it, Microsoft went ahead and dropped over $70 billion dollars on Activision Blizzard a couple of weeks ago, potentially giving it control of the world's biggest and most profitable shooter franchise. Microsoft has indicated that it intends to keep CoD multi-platform, but future Call of Duty titles could end up day one in Xbox Game Pass. It's unlikely that this year's CoD will find itself into the service, though, given how long it'll take for the deal to go through. But who knows?

In any case, stay tuned to Windows Central for all the latest on Call of Duty and beyond.