Activision just announced that it isn't letting up on a franchise that has shifted 250 million units and earned the company $15 billion to date, Call of Duty.
As if driven by some beckoning to a particular obligation, call it a duty, Activision will attempt to make 2016 its eighth year earning the top spot in North America's market for video game software.
"In Q4 2016, Activision Publishing plans to release an innovative new Call of Duty game from its studio, Infinity Ward, the makers of the Modern Warfare series," says Activision.
The company proclaims that Call of Duty titles have held that distinction for each of the past seven years. However, Take Two might be clearing its throat over 2013, the year of Grand Theft Auto V.
Activision isn't expecting this fall's Call of Duty game to be the greatest in the series, though it is anticipating that the franchise, on the back of Black Ops 3 and its DLC, will see an increase in revenue year over year.
The Call of Duty franchise, beloved and bemoaned because of its annual releases, has shifted to a three-studio strategy that sees a different arm develop a new game every three years.
It's Infinity Ward's turn this time around, sending Black Ops studio Treyarch back for three years of development and moving Advanced Warfare studio into its second year of work on its next title.
Infinity Ward, the studio behind Ghosts and Modern Warfare, hasn't leaked the slightest detail about what it's working on. On Thursday afternoon, the studio celebrated, in a tweet, what it and the rest of the games industry already knew.
"COD 2016. Now it's official," says Infinity Ward in a tweet. "Can't wait to show you what we've been developing!"
Ahead of its final push this fall for Infinity Ward's Call of Duty, Activision will attempt to drive up interest in the game with a grand finale of the inaugural run of the Call of Duty World League Pro Division. The Call of Duty Championship will play out in the last quarter of the year.
