Activision: 3 Year Development Cycle for Call of Duty Gives Devs 'Freedom to Fail' - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 15 August 2014 / 7,096 Views

Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg spoke with Joystiq in an interview at Gamescom this week. He stated that giving developers three years to develop each Call of Duty title will give them breathing room and make sure each title is up to the standards players are accustomed to.

"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," said Hirshberg. "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."

"The thing that the three-year development cycle allows is these games have gotten so ambitious, we're packing so many different modes of play onto the disc," Hirshberg continued. "The things that started off as flyers, like zombies or co-op became their own whole games."

There are currently three developers working on the Call of Duty franchise with a new title released every year. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be released for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on November 4, 2014.

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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. Outside, in the real world, he has a passion for the outdoors which includes everything from hiking to having received his B.A. in Environmental Studies. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.

6 Comments

FujiokaMidori (on 15 August 2014)

More development time is always good... well, I mean not Duke Nukem long but definitely better than one year.

Nintentacle FujiokaMidori (on 16 August 2014)

It's actually used to be 2 years, not 1.

-1

nanorazor FujiokaMidori (on 16 August 2014)

Yeah its " 2 years, not 1.", But anyways movie games are mostly one year and also point out AAA game with more development time only fail when they are over budget. Long development time need large budget to work.