EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: sledgehammergames
After getting to grips with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s Spec Ops Mission Mode and experiencing the game’s extremely refined and very impressive combat, I moved over one station at Activision’s press booth at gamescom 2011 to have a look at the game’s Survival Mode, which at first may seem like a regular wave-based co-operative mode in which you defend yourself from streams of enemies, but soon turns out to be something much more.
No doubt of special importance was the showing of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 at Microsoft’s E3 2011 press conference (as opposed to, say, Sony or Nintendo’s events), and Infinity Ward’s own Robert Bowling and Sledgehammer Games’ Glenn Schofield took to the stage to give a live demonstration of the studios’ next blockbuster first-person shooter.
In the last 24 hours, two fairly significant pieces of rumoured information have emerged in the world of videogames, both of which are near and dear to many a gamer’s heart: The next Call of Duty, and the upcoming Dashboard update for Xbox 360.
Let’s rummage around in some half-truths and indulge in some whole lies for a while, shall we?
According to Activision Blizzard’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, Thomas Tippl, not only does the mega-publisher treat its developers “extremely well,” but even in the face of the recent and controversial shake-ups at Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward, with over a dozen developers leaving the studio, prospective talent in the videogame industry should “crave” the opportunity to work on a franchise as successful as Call of Duty.
Activision Blizzard has announced that the publisher’s newly formed internal studio, Sledgehammer Games, will handle an iteration of the Call of Duty franchise in 2011, taking over the reigns from franchise stalwarts and creators Infinity Ward.
This news arrives on the back of the revelation that Infinity Ward studio heads and co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella have been let go from their positions after an apparent breach of contract with Activision, in the wake of a worrying period at the developer on Monday that saw strong-arm and intimidation tactics resulting in panicked, “confused” and “freaked out” employees.
After top EA developers Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey left the publisher and their newly renamed studio, Visceral Games (Dead Space, Dante’s Inferno), earlier this year to pursue further careers at Activision Blizzard, not much was known about what they would be up to next at EA’s rival, aside from the news that the pair would be leading a new studio to work on a game based on one of Activision’s past franchises.
This secret new studio, previously only known as ‘Activision Bay Area,’ has now been formally named by Activision as Sledgehammer Games, based in Foster City, California, with Schofield (as Vice President and General Manager of the studio) and Condrey (as Vice President and COO) at the helm.
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