The reveal of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, coming just 12 months after the previous Modern Warfare game, has series fans worried that this is simply going to be a glorified DLC pack.
While Call of Duty games have been released annually since way back in 2005, each subseries typically gets a two- or three-year break between entries in order to allow the developers to build some meaningful improvements over the previous title. There was a three-year gap between Modern Warfare in 2019 and Modern Warfare 2 in 2022, for example. While Modern Warfare 3 is being handled by Sledgehammer this time around - as opposed to Infinity War on the previous two MW games - but that's still a tight turnaround on a direct follow-up to MW2.
Back in early 2022, reports from historically reliable insiders suggested that there would be no annual Call of Duty game in 2023, and follow-up reports later in the year claimed that the franchise's next big release would instead be a Modern Warfare 2 expansion. For its part, Activision repeatedly insisted that 2023 would bring us a "full premium release" for Call of Duty.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War reportedly surpasses Red Dead Redemption 2's huge development costs, with a massive $700 million budget
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 rumors have just been upgraded from podcast mentions and Call of Duty map teasers to a full countdown on the official Activision website
Now, fans are starting to suspect that Modern Warfare 3 did indeed begin life as an expansion pack before morphing into a standalone game, and there's no shortage of trepidation in various discussion forums that the new game might not adequately address long-standing complaints about MW2.
As one of the more popular posts in the recently created Modern Warfare 3 subreddit puts it, "This game should not exist and should have stayed DLC like the original plan. We’re just getting ripped off into paying another $70 this year."
"So MW2 year 2 with a seventy dollar charge? Yeah, this is gonna go over great," another Reddit user says. Or, if you want a take even more cynical, "It's almost as if they saw people come out in droves to buy the pile of dog crap that MW22 was, and because Activision is all about the money, so they're rushing to get a 'OOO Shiny and NEW!' Modern Warfare game out ASAP to keep the revenue stream going."
It's worth noting that Call of Duty fans aren't brimming with universal negativity here - yes, really - and there are quite a few taking a 'wait and see' approach with MW3. "This is almost exactly the same scenario that happened back in the original MW2-MW3," as one user says. "Super similar in gameplay, guns, perks, and maps. But the distinctions were still enough to make the two games feel pretty different."
We'll find out what Modern Warfare 3 actually has in store soon enough, as the one detail that's been officially confirmed is that it's due to launch on November 10, 2023.
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