Call of Duty gets the shooter highlight of the year with Modern Warfare 2. But after that you should pay without getting a new CoD.

Santa Monica, California – Modern Warfare 2 is about to be released, but there's already info on what's going to happen to Call of Duty after that. Activision has officially leaked how it plans to make shareholders even richer: players will pay for “premium content.” What's behind it?

After Modern Warfare 2, you should pay more for CoD – What is the mysterious “premium content”?

Where is the info coming from? Activision makes billions of dollars with Call of Duty. Of course, that attracts investors, and the publisher has to present them with figures and future plans every year. The latest quarterly report is now public – we've dug through the numbers and dug up some interesting details. Here you can find Activision's complete financial report for Q2-2022.

No CoD for a year after MW2? Rumors that no new Call of Duty spin-off will be released in 2023 have been doing the rounds for a while. Thus, Activision would take a break after Modern Warfare 2 and the still 2022 appearing Warzone 2 and not as usual in the annual cycle a new CoD rausbballern. That would be great, since a new part of the popular shooter series has been released every year for 20 years (since 2004). The rumor is now getting a lot more weight, as the financial report reveals.

However, to compensate for the lack of a new CoD, Activision wants to bring premium content. These plans the publisher officially presents itself in the financial report, there it says cryptically:

Across the Call of Duty ecosystem, teams are ready to support these launches with extensive live operations while continuing the development of new premium content planned for 2023 and beyond.”

What does this mean? We classify how to interpret the info from the financial report. We also analyze why Call of Duty is on the brink of crisis – and not for the first time.

Call of Duty loses 50 million players a year – This is how Activision wants to avoid the crisis.

What is premium content supposed to be? What exactly Activision wants to bring in 2023 under the mysterious name “Premium Content” is still a secret at the moment. In this context, premium is usually referred to as paid content, which means that players will be asked to pay. Fans are currently speculating about the following possibilities:

• Paid add-on content for Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2, and CoD Mobile that runs in parallel with Battle Pass.
• So you strongly support ongoing games instead of developing new ones
• Remake of an old series installment – for example, Modern Warfare 3 (2011).
• Revive of Call of Duty Elite: this was early a paid subscription that gave deep insight into stats, offered social features, and brought exclusive content and new content, among other things
• An as-yet unannounced game from Activision could be in the pipeline for 2023

Live service offerings like this work well for other games. CoD itself has long had a – Season Pass designed to drive players to log in with cosmetics and new weapons. But that probably doesn't fall under the announced premium content, it just keeps running.

Is CoD in a crisis? By 2018, Call of Duty was struggling with severely dwindling interest – in 2019, Modern Warfare and Warzone combined with Pandemic brought CoD back to the big stage. Player numbers went through the roof, huge profits were made. But since then, interest has been steadily declining. Currently, CoD and Activision have lost 50 million players – a good 40%.

In 2022, they want to repeat the success of three years ago. The chances are good, because the winning combo is coming back. The strongest drawcards Modern Warfare (2) and Warzone (2) sound more or less like a remake of the successful year. However, Activision is aware that they have shot their powder. All successors will probably be overshadowed by the CoD heavyweights for many.

That's how credible a year without CoD is: So it makes perfect sense that they're not bringing a new Call of Duty for 2023, but riding the “MW2/Warzone” 2 wave. When 2020 and 2021 brought Cold War and Vanguard, interest plummeted – those parts were noticeably less popular. It is also understandable that premium content is used to pay the thousands of developers (and to promise the shareholders fat dividends).

Would you be willing to pay money even if there was no new Call of Duty coming? Or do you even think it's great that Activision doesn't release a new series one year and the series has more time to develop? If you'd rather look ahead to 2022 and want to know more about Modern Warfare 2, take a good look at the latest leak: Football stars secretly post first pictures of the new CoD – despite Activision's ban.