Report: Modern Warfare 3 Coming In November, Spin-Off Delayed

If we’re getting a Modern Warfare 3 this November, it’s going to come at the cost of an Call of Duty spin-off from the head creator of Dead Space, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

Citing “people familiar with the situation”, the paper says that Infinity Ward, the studio behind the last two Modern Warfares isn’t going to get Modern Warfare 3 done alone. Parent company Activision is enlisting the help of its Sledgehammer Games and Raven studios to make the game.

Infinity Ward’s struggles are believable, given that the founders and dozens of key members of the studio were fired or quit late 2010. Modern Warfare games have usually taken two years to make and that kind of distraction would seem to have delayed such a schedule. Sledgehammer is a new Activision studio headed by two of the top creators behind the horror sci-fi series Dead Space, which is now made without them at rival company EA. Sledgehammer had been working on a Call of Duty of its own, one originally thought to be a third-person game but more recently touted as a first-person shooter. The Times reports that Sledgehammer is working on Modern Warfare 3′s singleplayer with Infinity Ward and that Raven, the studio behind many shooters and action games including last year’s Singularity, is helping with multiplayer.

Activision has clarified up none of this, but did tell Kotaku today that “There’s been much speculation recently. We look forward to releasing details for the next Call of Duty in the near future.”

Activision calls in reinforcements for next Call of Duty game [Los Angeles Times]