Sledgehammer Games reportedly developing Call of Duty 2021

A new year brings with it a new Call of Duty game, but the developers of this years Call of Duty remains a mystery. A prominent leaker is suggesting that Sledgehammer Games are the developers behind the next release.

The original Call of Duty life cycle started with Treyarch and Infinity Ward rotating on a two-year development cycle until Sledgehammer Games were added to that for a brief period. From 2012-2017 Sledgehammer worked on their own Call of Duty titles, including Advanced Warfare and WW2. The studio then fell back into an assisting role helping with 2019’s Modern Warfare and 2020’s Black Ops Cold War.

It could be a while before 2021’s Call of Duty title is announced but according to prominent leaker Tom Henderson we could be looking at another fully fledged game from Sledgehammer Games.

https://twitter.com/TomHenderson/status/1345755754796621826

Tom has a history of accurate leaks including leaking all of Black Ops Cold Wars killstreaks before they were announced. His recent leak was shared int he form of an image on Twitter displaying a timeline of the past two years and the roles each developer had in developing Call of Duty games in that time.

Infinity Ward continued with Warzone development for a long time after it’s release, until they handed development over to Treyarch in September 2020. This allows Infinity Ward only 14 months of development time for their next game.

“Infinity Ward isn’t working on the next title,” he said in his follow up live stream on the same day.

“Warzone post-launch content ended [for Infinity Ward] in September. A lot of Infinity Ward’s resources were put into Warzone.”

With Infinity Ward only having 14 months to develop a new game, that would be extremely difficult, so it looks like Sledgehammer have been brought in working on the upcoming release since August 2019, giving them a total of two years and three months to work on the game.

We don’t know what the game is that they’ve been working on. “Advanced Warfare 2 and a WWII sequel are both plausible,” says Henderson. He also hinted at a follow up to 2019’s Modern Warfare.