Call of Duty’s New Subfranchise Follows a Path Ghosts Took

Activision will start a new Call of Duty subfranchise after Modern Warfare 4, chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl said on October 15. He said the next named line is already in motion because players wanted a shift after stacked Modern Warfare and Black Ops sequels.

A New Call of Duty Line Is Already in Motion

Bahl did not name the studio, the setting, or the year. He did say the work has started, and he tied it to a simple complaint: the last few annual games felt like the same house with new wallpaper. Modern Warfare 4, he added, will close the story Infinity Ward has told since the 2019 reboot, even if some characters can return later.

It was not something that our community was looking for. They wanted something fresh, and even though there were different time settings, and ways to play the game with new features, that tonal shift is something that they were looking for. So, we’ve already stated that a future title is going to be a new sub-franchise and we’ve already laid the groundwork. But we’re really excited about Modern Warfare 4, and that addresses some of that feedback.

Tyler Bahl, chief marketing officer, Activision, on The Game Business Show

He went further on the 2019-era Modern Warfare run. “I don’t want to give any spoilers, but this is going to be the epic conclusion of this recent series of Modern Warfare,” Bahl said. “It’s not that some characters and pieces can’t live on beyond this and be reinvented. But we’re excited by closing this chapter and launching a new one.”

That is the official position: finish this chapter, then put a new name on the box. The series has made that promise before.

The Sequel Sandwich That Broke in 2025

From 2022 through 2026, every annual Call of Duty has been a Modern Warfare or Black Ops game. That is five straight years of the two houses that print the most money, with Sledgehammer Games pulled in to ship Modern Warfare III in 2023 instead of a line of its own.

THE ANNUAL LINE FROM 2019 TO 2026

Vanguard in 2021 was the last annual game that did not wear a Modern Warfare or Black Ops title. Everything after it doubled down on those two brands, first as a pair of Modern Warfare sequels, then as Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 in consecutive years.

Black Ops 7, which launched in November 2025, is the year that broke the pattern in public. In Europe, the launch sat 50% below the previous Call of Duty. In the United States it finished 2025 at No. 5, the lowest annual rank for the series since 2008’s World at War. EA’s Battlefield 6 was the best-selling shooter of 2025. Ampere, the research firm, put Call of Duty’s monthly players around 40 million in 2024 and in the mid-20 millions in 2026.

Bahl did not hide the review. “I don’t think we were happy with every aspect of last year’s game, and we heard the feedback loud and clear,” he said. On December 9, 2025, the Call of Duty team had already put the change in writing, promising no more back-to-back Modern Warfare or Black Ops releases so each year could feel distinct. “We will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental,” the post said. “While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right.”

Bahl’s October remarks are those plans, still without a title. The new subfranchise is the product of a release calendar that asked Treyarch and Infinity Ward to follow themselves, then watched the second game in each pair take the blame.

Ghosts, Advanced Warfare and the One-Game Graveyard

A new Call of Duty name is not a new idea. Whenever the two main houses feel stale, Activision reaches for a third. The third name then ships once, sells, and leaves the calendar.

THE NAMES THAT NEVER GOT A SECOND GAME

• Ghosts, 2013: Infinity Ward left Modern Warfare for a new cast and a new war; the line ended after one entry.
• Advanced Warfare, 2014: Sledgehammer’s first solo Call of Duty added exosuits and future movement, then sold 21.8 million copies by October 2019 and never returned as a series.
• Infinite Warfare, 2016: Infinity Ward went to space, fans pushed back, and Activision did not order a sequel.
• WWII, 2017: Sledgehammer reset the clock to the Second World War; the next war game, years later, used a different title.
• Vanguard, 2021: The last new annual name, also from Sledgehammer, after which the schedule snapped back to Modern Warfare and Black Ops.

Those games were not secret flops in every case. They were not allowed to become houses. A December 2024 court filing put Black Ops III at 43 million copies and the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot at 41 million. That is what a pillar looks like on paper. Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare, WWII and Vanguard each asked players to care about a new subtitle. The next year, the box said Black Ops or Modern Warfare again.

Bahl now says the audience wants “new or better or different,” and that “you’re seeing new games being built overnight.” The series has heard that brief before. The last time it answered with jetpacks and space, players dragged it home to boots on the ground. The last time it answered with a fresh modern-era cast, the game was Ghosts, and there was no Ghosts 2.

Leaks Keep Pointing at Sledgehammer Games

Bahl would not say which studio is building the new line. The calendar still does. Infinity Ward is shipping Modern Warfare 4 and will be tied to live support after launch. Treyarch just came off Black Ops 7. Sledgehammer last led an annual game with Modern Warfare III in 2023, then spent the Black Ops years in support. That gap is long enough for a full pre-production pass on something with a new name.

The studio was founded to do something other than another Modern Warfare. Its first Call of Duty brief was a third-person game set in Vietnam, drawing on staff who had shipped Dead Space. That project died when Infinity Ward blew up and Sledgehammer was sent to help finish the original Modern Warfare 3 in 2011. Advanced Warfare in 2014 was the second swing, the exo suit year. Players kept the guns and dumped the future.

After that, Sledgehammer played safer: WWII, Vanguard, then someone else’s Modern Warfare sequel. Handing the studio a blank subtitle is both a promotion and a rerun. It is the team that already tried to invent a third pillar, already got burned, and already spent a decade making war games that looked like the last war game.

If the 2027 slot is theirs, they will be asked to excite people who just watched Black Ops 7 miss, and who still punish any Call of Duty that feels like a science-fiction demo. That is a narrower brief than “innovate” sounds on a podcast.

What the 2027 Rumors Claim

Leakers have spent a year filling in the blanks Bahl left. The short version, if those leaks hold, is a modern-era shooter with a new cast, faster movement, and no jetpacks, aimed at 2027 and led by Sledgehammer. That is not official.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The commitment: Bahl said a future title will be a new subfranchise and that the groundwork is already down.
• The Modern Warfare ending: He said Modern Warfare 4 closes the 2019-era story, with room for characters to return in some other form.
• The calendar rule: The Call of Duty team said in December 2025 it will not stack Modern Warfare or Black Ops games in consecutive years again.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The studio: Sledgehammer is the name in every leak; Bahl did not say it.
• The year: 2027 is the slot those leaks use; Activision has not dated the new line.
• The setting: A July 17, 2025 post from leaker TheGhostofHope said a modern era with no jetpacks, movement as a focus, Zombies not planned, and a possible turn toward martial arts and karate kicks.
• The 1990s variant: A later whisper put the game in the late 1990s or early 2000s; other leaks walked that back to the present day.

Karate in a first-person Call of Duty is catnip for clips and a hard thing to balance in a six-to-six ranked match. Close-quarters gun-fu reads better in a third-person brawler than in a game that still has to feel fair when two players round the same door. Treat it as a rumor about melee animation, not as a design document.

A new subfranchise is still an annual Call of Duty with a fresh name on the box. That is the entire product. It is also why the WW1 mockups that circulated after Bahl spoke are noise: the leaks that exist point at the present day, and Activision has not shown a single map. The test that actually matters is whether the new name is allowed to come back for a second year. Ghosts never did.

October 23 Is Still the Immediate Test

The new line can wait. Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2, the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since 2013. Campaign early access for digital pre-orders started October 16. DMZ early access follows on October 20.

MODERN WARFARE 4 AT LAUNCH

• The date: Full launch is October 23, 2026, with no last-gen versions.
• The campaign: Official materials put players in Korea, New York, Paris, and Mumbai, as Private Park, a South Korean soldier, while Captain Price works off the books.
• The maps: Multiplayer ships with 12 new 6v6 maps, plus larger maps tied to the campaign’s war.
• The pitch: Bahl called it a return to a grounded military shooter, cinematic and authentic, after a year he said the company was not happy with.

Infinity Ward has been dragging the game to events, including four booths at Gamescom, and running an Infinity Ward behind-the-scenes series to look less sealed-off than the brand has in some years. Bahl said the Black Ops and Black Ops 2 PlayStation ports that arrived in summer sold so hard they surprised the company, and that Modern Warfare 4 is meant to bottle that Friday-night habit. He also said the success metric is not a unit target. “Because even if it delivers on sales, if people don’t like the game, we’ve missed the mark.”

He put the order of operations in one line. “It’s about getting that right first before thinking about anything else.” The new Call of Duty subfranchise is real as a corporate decision. It still sits behind a game that has to land in six days, on a series that has already tried this reset and gone back to the two names that pay.