When And How Will Call Of Duty Get A New Engine?

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It's just one of those questions that suddenly hits you. And your answer usually is something like, "oh yeah...how's that gonna actually happen?"

As we all know, Call of Duty has been using the same engine for almost six years now. The competition - namely, DICE and EA - used that lagging to their advantage by continually promoting the fancy Frostbite 2 engine for Battlefield 3.

Now, granted, I think Infinity Ward and Treyarch have managed to get a tremendous amount of mileage out of that engine; it isn't like they never upgraded or refined it. IW really managed to make a great game with Modern Warfare 3 and most critics and gamers would agree with that. However, even the most ardent CoD fans would love to see a new engine for their beloved franchise. It could really make the series shine as bright - if not brighter - than Battlefield. But wait...don't we have a vicious circle here? A Catch .22 of sorts?

It takes time to develop a new engine. Activision would never want CoD to miss a year; the publisher wants its annual billion-dollar payday. So, if they request a new title every twelve months, how will we ever get a new engine? Will it finally get so old that even Activision is forced to take a year off? Or maybe they'll just assign development of that new engine to the "other" CoD team. In other words, maybe they'll tell Infinity Ward to create that new engine while Treyarch works on the next CoD.

Essentially, each developer has two years to make a CoD, not one. So maybe that's the way it's going to happen. But for some reason, I get this sneaking suspicion that we're going to have to wait even longer...perhaps even until the next console generation. I mean, it's not like they're losing sales because of an old engine. So if they keep breaking records, why bother, right?

Source: PSX

Not until next-generation. New engines on current generations of consoles don't actually look all that better. Battlefield 3 on consoles proves that.

Activision: :fuckthat:

Next generation.

Hopefully, never. I want COD to be dead next generation.

^ like that's gonna happen.

Teckno wrote:

^ like that's gonna happen.

It might. We just need someone to come up with a plan to bomb treyarch, activision, and infinity ward.

We can all dream, can't we?

It's definitely gonna be next-gen. New consoles are rumored to be shipping in 2012 (the Wii U we know is, the Nextbox is a rumor), meaning there will only be one more Call of Duty game on these consoles. I highly doubt a new engine will be made for that one game specifically.

Just look how FrostBite 2.0 turned out, looks bad on consoles. They'll wait until next gen but don't expect a massive leap, it would probably cost oul Bobby and the boys to much money, and they know even if they did put out Modern Warfare 5 on the next gen consoles the "fans" would still buy it in the multi millions, regardless of how it looks or if it's not on par with the future FPS's.

The current engine is based off the id tech 3, so technically the could just upgrade to the id tech 4 without having to make an entirely new engine. they can just modify that engine to suit their liking. hell they should have done that when MW2 came out. And they can't use id tech 5 because Bethesda has a monopoly on it. Either way, Infinity Ward and Activision are to fat, greedy, ad lazy to either buy, modify, or build a new engine.

chobo500 wrote:

The current engine is based off the id tech 3, so technically the could just upgrade to the id tech 4 without having to make an entirely new engine. they can just modify that engine to suit their liking. hell they should have done that when MW2 came out. And they can't use id tech 5 because Bethesda has a monopoly on it. Either way, Infinity Ward and Activision are to fat, greedy, ad lazy to either buy, modify, or build a new engine.

You have to admit that those years of optimizing the same base engine paid off. 60 FPS on consoles, very fluid controls, really epic set pieces, good graphics. I'd much rather have a game running on a tried and true engine than have it running on a buggy next gen engine.

It gives the COD developers more time and money to focus on other aspects of the game while almost guaranteeing a smooth and consistent experience (gameplay wise, maybe not connection wise) for their customers..

Reaper wrote:

I'm with Duke on this one, i hope cod dies....more games are starting to claw their way into getting more sales going against cod.

I would say that is the gaming industry growing rather than people buying other games apart from cod. Sure Battlefield, Uncharted and Skyrim did better than their previous games, but it did nothing to Modern Warfare 3 sales which still grew year on year. Good signs for the industry.

BUT THAT MEANS THEY WOULD HAVE TO WAIT A FEW YEARS BEFORE THE NEXT ONE