According to Polygon, Activision has announced it will no longer release consecutive games in the Modern Warfare or Black Ops subseries. This follows the 2023 release of Modern Warfare 3 just a year after Modern Warfare 2, and this year’s Black Ops 7 following 2024’s Black Ops 6. The announcement comes as Black Ops 7’s campaign has been critically panned and the game is reportedly being outsold by its main competitor, Battlefield 6. This breaks a long-standing pattern where, from 2005 to 2022, annual Call of Duty releases typically alternated both lead developers and subseries. The move is being framed as a commitment to drive “innovation that is meaningful, not incremental.”
An Admission of Fault
Let’s be real. This announcement is basically Activision admitting their strategy backfired. Releasing what are essentially glorified expansion packs as full-priced, standalone sequels just 12 months apart was a recipe for fatigue. I mean, there were even rumors that Modern Warfare 3 was originally planned as DLC before getting the full-game treatment. When your player counts dip and your rival starts outselling you, you have to do something. So this is step one. But here’s the thing: is it enough?
The Real Problem is the Calendar
Look, skipping a Black Ops or Modern Warfare year is fine. But it doesn’t solve the core issue: the relentless annual release cadence itself. Call of Duty is one of the last major franchises outside of sports games that’s chained to this model. And it shows. The article points out that Black Ops 6 had a fantastic campaign, but everything it did well was abandoned for Black Ops 7. Why? Probably because the devs simply didn’t have the time to build on it. They were too busy rushing out the next product.
Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 proves that taking a longer gap—four years in its case—can lead to a massive, successful hit. It gave the team time to actually iterate. Activision’s own statement about “meaningful innovation” is a tacit admission that their recent innovations have been, well, incremental at best. You can’t bake a great cake if you’re only given 10 minutes in the kitchen.
Black Ops 7 Could Have Been a Foundation
This is the frustrating part. By most accounts, Black Ops 7’s multiplayer and Zombies modes are actually pretty good. The maps are solid, Zombies is impressive, and Season 1 is being called the biggest seasonal update ever. This is a game that, with two or three years of dedicated support and content, could have become a thriving platform. Instead, its fate is already sealed by the ticking clock of the next annual release. The developers say they “won’t rest” until it’s one of the best Black Ops games, but how can they achieve that if the entire player base is expected to move on in a year?
What Activision Should Do Next
So, they’ve stopped the back-to-back subseries releases. Big deal. The next, braver step is to break the annual cycle altogether. Support a game like Black Ops 7 for longer. Let it breathe. Build a true live-service juggernaut instead of a disposable yearly product. This would require a huge shift in their business model, of course. But the alternative is watching the competition with Battlefield get even more intense while player sentiment continues to sour.
It’s a classic case of short-term greed versus long-term health. The official message from the team sounds optimistic, but actions speak louder than words. They need to give their talented studios the one thing they’ve clearly been lacking: time. Otherwise, this “change” is just rearranging the deck chairs on a ship that’s slowly taking on water.
