Call of Duty 2023 will reportedly be a full new game, but also a continuation of MW2

It looks like a new Call of Duty game will be released in 2023 after all, according to a new report by Bloomberg.

There’s been much confusion about this year’s CoD release dating back to last summer when Activision confirmed “new premium content” coming to the franchise in 2023. In investor language, premium just means “you have to pay for this.”

But what wasn’t clear at the time was if the 2023 CoD entry would be a new title or something different. A report surfaced in November that Activision was working on a large-scale paid DLC for Modern Warfare 2 for the end of this year, but it appears things have changed.

According to the report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, 2023’s CoD was indeed originally planned to be a paid expansion of MW2. But plans have changed, and now, it will reportedly be sold and marketed as its own game while simultaneously being an extension of MW2.

Whatever CoD’s 2023 title ends up being, Schreier says it’s being developed by Sledgehammer Games, the makers of Call of Duty: Vanguard, with supervision from Infinity Ward, the development team behind the Modern Warfare series.

The report claims that this year’s CoD is aimed to “feel like a standalone, full-price release and also an extension” of MW2. Originally, it was planned to be a “big” release for MW2 with single-player and multiplayer content but has now “morphed” into a full game release. Some content from MW2 will carry over to the new title.

Schreier also said that, at one point, Activision briefed its staff on “a brand new vision for Call of Duty in which the series would switch between Modern Warfare and Black Ops games, reach receiving two years of support.” But with the company’s impending acquisition by Microsoft, Activision “waits” to decide what’s next.