Activision 的《Modern Warfare 4》回归计划与《Call of Duty》整改内幕

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In This Edition,

• State of Call of Duty

• Activision’s comeback plan

• LucasFilm targets independents

• Plus! Lots of AI news

Hello there!

It’s a mega edition of The Game Business this week, featuring two huge interviews.

Our big focus is on Activision’s bid to regain fan trust with this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, featuring insight from chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl.

And we also have an interview with Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly and Fuse Games boss Matt Webster to discuss a more independent approach to making Star Wars games.

You can watch or listen to the whole thing above. Alternatively, I’ve picked out the key quotes below.

P.S. If you happen to be in London next week, The Game Business will be hosting a live on-stage interview with video game legend John Romero. It’s part of MCM Comic-Con, and game industry people can come for free by signing up for here.

Can Modern Warfare 4 fix Call of Duty?

By its own high standards, Call of Duty is in a tough spot.

Last year’s Black Ops 7 disappointed fans, and reached commercial lows not seen for nearly two decades. In Europe, the game’s launch was 50% below the previous year’s title. Meanwhile in the US, it finished the year at No.5, the lowest ranking for a Call of Duty since 2008’s World at War.

In fact, Battlefield 6 was the best-selling shooter of 2025, ending Call of Duty’s reign that had stretched back to the mid-2000s.

There’s also been a drop in players across the franchise. According to Ampere, the Call of Duty monthly player count was routinely around 40 million in 2024, while in 2026, the figures have been in the mid-20 million range (note: Modern Warfare 2 and 3 data is missing after July 2025, and Black Ops 6 data is missing after July 2026).

“I don’t think we were happy with every aspect of last year’s game, and we heard the feedback loud and clear,” Activision chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl told The Game Business Show.

“With Modern Warfare 4, we’ve tried to adjust based on that feedback. It’s getting back to a grounded military shooter. Making it cinematic, making it authentic, and bringing that edge back that Call of Duty is known for.”

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There is positive buzz around next week’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. And the series saw a surprising surge in players during the summer following the PlayStation ports of 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops and 2012’s Black Ops 2, which, according to Ampere, saw the franchise player count return to the near 40 million mark.

In our interview with Bahl, we discuss Call of Duty’s comeback plan, its new relationship with Game Pass, leaving behind PS4 and Xbox One, returning to Nintendo, dealing with GTA 6, and the surprise success of those Black Ops ports.

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The Call of Duty comeback plan

In 2022, Activision released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and in 2023 followed that up with Modern Warfare 3. It repeated the same ‘quick sequel’ approach with Black Ops 6 in 2024 and Black Ops 7 in 2025.

“It was not something that our community was looking for,” Bahl said. “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.”

Modern Warfare 4 will be more grounded, Bahl said. And the main success metric isn’t sales or player count, but whether fans care about the game.

“We’re not really holding ourselves to a specific number,” he says. “It’s more about living up to those expectations that we set out at the beginning of the year. And if that works, we can go from this game to the next game and build on that foundation. But it’s about getting that right first before thinking about anything else. Because even if it delivers on sales, if people don’t like the game, we’ve missed the mark.”

Bahl says there’s a bigger focus on community this time, and points to the From the Ward YouTube series, which takes fans behind-the-scenes on making Modern Warfare 4.

“There was a period where Call of Duty was a little hands-off and not talking to the community. And Infinity Ward, with the new leadership, has done a lot to really engage.”

This includes going to shows, with the game being shown at over 20 events worldwide.

“We had four different booths at Gamescom. We were absolutely everywhere. Coming out of last year, we really wanted to rebuild trust, and the best way you can do that is put the game in people’s hands.”

Activision eyes nostalgia

In the summer, Activision surprise launched Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and 5. The 2010 and 2012 games sold in huge numbers, and caught the publisher by surprise.

“We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends,” Bahl told us. “The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well, we didn’t think they would do that well. But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun. MW4 does that.”

He added: “We took a lot of learnings from [those ports] and are starting to apply them to not only this game, but future games.”

Call of Duty’s press challenge

In a recent media roundtable, one prominent game journalist told me they don’t cover Call of Duty as much as they used to. He told me a lot of the franchise’s coverage comes from the influencer space.

Is that true?

“We get the coverage,” Bahl said. “But we call it the Call of Duty tax, when we’re thinking about the reviews or the reception. There’s obviously a lot of fandom around indie games and excitement around new games popping up every day on Steam. And Call of Duty’s been here for a very long time, and with that people sometimes forget that there’s so much work that goes into making these games. There’s 4,500 employees here that are trying to make the best possible experience.

“We have 100 million free-to-play players, we’ve sold 500 million units, it’s one of the biggest franchises of all time, and we have a billion downloads on mobile. And so that huge audience. I think, sometimes, gets overlooked or just becomes status quo. There’s craft that goes into these games, and the dedication from the teams was something that we wanted to show this year with the marketing.”

GTA 6 could boost Modern Warfare 4 sales

Last month, we suggested that GTA 6 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake could be video games’ ‘Barbenheimer’ moment. Activision challenges that idea, and is optimistic the upcoming Rockstar epic will drive some players to Call of Duty.

“Well, no offense to Zelda, but [GTA and COD] are the two biggest games of the year. And more people coming in to the dashboards, more people taking the dust off their Xbox or PlayStation and playing again, is going to be more eyeballs for us overall.

“And at the end of the day, what makes Call of Duty last the test of time is the community and social experience. When we look at our research and say, ‘what is the most exciting things about our games? Is it the gunplay?’ It’s actually spending time with friends. And so, we stand on our own [in that regard].

“If more people are talking about games, if there’s more press around it, that’s going to be good for everybody, not just us.”

Nintendo is fully behind Modern Warfare 4

Modern Warfare 4 is coming to Switch 2, which represents Call of Duty’s return to Nintendo for the first time since 2013.

“We’re rebuilding this relationship,” Bahl said. “Nintendo has been all in. We have a co-marketing campaign that we’ve launched with them. In a lot of ways, they want to age up their customer and want a broader spectrum by having an first person shooter on there. Their console sales grew to a certain point, but then stagnated, and this will allow them to extend the offering.

“I see it as a companion experience. I have a Switch 2, I’m flying to London this afternoon, and I’ll bring my Switch 2 with me and can play Modern Warfare 4. That’s an awesome companion experience.”

He added: “Nintendo’s been an amazing partner in co-marketing. I only see that relationship developing as we have future titles like Spyro coming back.”

Call of Duty’s future is about innovation

“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 concluded. “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.

“Where we go with future games, we have to innovate. What we heard from the audience is they want new or better or different. The landscape is changing right under our feet. You’re seeing new games being built overnight, and you’re seeing tastes change and how people want to play.”

Check out the full interview with Bahl above.

You don’t have to be a Top Five publisher to make a Star Wars game

The success of Star Wars: Zero Company and Galactic Racer proves that you don’t need to be a giant game maker to deliver a hit Star Wars game.

Fuse Games’ Galactic Racer is the highest rated Star Wars game in 20 years, while Bit Reactor’s Zero Company is the joint second highest-rated title. Both games are notable for being made by independent studios.

“It very much is part of the strategy,” said Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly in today’s The Game Business Show.

“Obviously, huge triple-A games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy. But one of the great things about Star Wars is it has all kinds of other opportunities to tell stories in different genres. The goal has been to find the best partner who makes that experience come alive inside the galaxy far, far away. And it doesn’t have to always be triple-A, sometimes it can be double-A, and it’s really about the experience that we’re delivering and the fantasy we’re fulfilling.”

Reilly told us that he’s learnt that if Lucasfilm can find the best partners to make Star Wars games, then the business side tends to work itself out. And sometimes those partners aren’t so obvious.

“We’ve tried to be more flexible about who we’re willing to take pitches from,” he explained. “Good ideas can come from a lot of different places. You don’t have to necessarily be a Top Five publisher to make a great Star Wars game. There are some hurdles. We have a high quality bar, and that means typically we work with more experienced teams than ones with no track record. But we’re exploring all kinds of things, large and small, with partners that are going to surprise folks.”

“We’re exploring all kinds of things, large and small, with partners that are going to surprise folks”

Indeed, although they are independent teams, Bit Reactor is made up of veteran developers from the XCOM series, while Fuse was founded by Criterion leaders who had worked with Lucasfilm before on Battlefront.

Fuse boss Matt Webster said that Lucasfilm is more than just a licensing partner, and advises other studios to adapt to that.

“You have to build that into your way of working,” he said. “It’s like any other constraint. You can’t fight it. You’re working with it. And it’s an honor and a privilege to do so. They are the experts in Star Wars, and there are game makers there, and that’s incredibly valuable. I’ve worked with other license partners in the past, and it’s an approval transaction model. This is not that, by any stretch of the imagination.

“If you want to be making something with somebody else’s property, and particularly such a beloved thing as Star Wars, there’s a responsibility to that. You need to operate accordingly.”

That’s it for today’s bumper edition of The Game Business Show. Join us next week for more major interviews!