Source: Forcedisconnect.com

Sledgehammer Games will be taking the helm for the next Call of Duty game, following this year’s Treyarch version. This follows news earlier this week of Jason West’s termination from Infinity Ward due to a breach of contract and insubordination.

According to the article on Gamasutra, Activision plans to center the next Call of Duty games around delivering “high margin digital content” (read: Pay to play). My speculation is that the former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella either had opposition to this, or would not be able to make Activision’s yearly cycle for releases.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Call of Duty series, I think the games are greatly overrated and are quite a bit too simplistic for my tastes, but even I can admit that this whole scenario reeks of wrong. Infinity Ward created a product that their fans really enjoy, and they built the franchise from the ground up. To be removed from it now is a kick in the face.

When you purchase games from Activision, these are the business practices that you are endorsing. They run franchises into the ground, and shaft the developers.

Looks like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero are going to getting a new friend in the “land of games driven into the ground by Activision”. Although, to be honest, after Modern Warfare 2 and it’s myriad of problems it felt like they had already called Tony and asked him to save them a seat.