According to the company’s third-quarter financial report, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty 2023 plans includes the “next full premium release in the blockbuster yearly series” (pdf). While this would be unremarkable in most years given Call of Duty’s usual autumn release cycle, Bloomberg reported in February that Activision Blizzard intended to postpone its anticipated yearly entry until 2023.
According to Bloomberg, Activision Blizzard planned to postpone the 2023 release due to the bad reception of 2021’s Call of Duty: Vanguard, which failed to fulfil the company’s expectations. In addition, Bloomberg reported in January that the corporation was contemplating changing the yearly releases.
Activision Blizzard seemed to reject the notion at the time, while it did not explicitly confirm the existence of a 2023 game. In February, Activision spokesman Neil Wood stated, “We have a great schedule of premium and free-to-play Call of Duty experiences for this year, next year, and beyond.” “Reports of anything else are false.” We look forward to providing additional information when the time comes.”
In recent years, Activision has extended the series beyond the yearly premium releases. With Call of Duty: Mobile, Warzone battle royale (which will be updated to 2.0 later this month), and the impending mobile Warzone release in 2023, it seems that the firm could have taken a year off to work on other Call of Duty games and services.
But that won’t happen in 2023, as Activision Blizzard is planning another major Call of Duty product for the year, maybe spurred by the massive popularity of the recently released Modern Warfare II.
Activision Blizzard also cautioned in its results that it may be unable to negotiate a new arrangement to licence “several” of its games in China with “a third party,” since the agreements, which generated “about” 3% of its consolidated net sales in 2021, expire in January 2023. “We are in negotiations about renewing these agreements, but a mutually suitable solution may not be achieved.” Its Diablo Immortal co-development and publishing relationship with NetEase is unaffected since it is covered by a different agreement.
Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard, revealed in January, is still through the requisite regulatory approvals. The transaction is likely to be finalised during Microsoft’s fiscal year 2023, which ends in June.
