Rumors about Call of Duty 7 already surfacing

Call of Duty: World at War has a new map pack coming out in June. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (assuming it still carries the CoD name) is hitting this November. Not content to stop there, publisher Activision-Blizzard is already prepping the next entry in the franchise. 

According to a 1up News report, the 7th main entry in the Call of Duty franchise is under development at Treyarch under the same lead as World at War, Noah Heller. Reportedly, Activision is seeking to license music from Cold War-era locales such as Vietnam, Cuba, Africa, and the Soviet Union. This suggests a Cold War era game (kind of like the flashback Chernobyl sniper level in CoD4), but rather than focusing in one or two locations (such as an obvious choice in Vietnam) the team is looking to feature a broader range of Cold War-related conflicts.

While the concept itself sounds very intriguing, the big picture question for Activision is do they really need to be doing this to such a stellar franchise? Keep in mind this is the publisher that has ruined various franchises by trying to pump too much money out of them (see: Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero). Maybe it would be better served to give the franchise a year off after Modern Warfare 2. Of course, it must be noted that in the official trailer (see below) MW2 does not even bear the "Call of Duty" brand, so maybe Infinity Ward is trying to distance themselves from the franchise for fears of said exploitation.

Either way, you've got to feel bad for those guys at IW since they originally came to Activision with the original Call of Duty to escape the yearly exploits of their Medal of Honor games by Electronic Arts. How ironic then that EA of recent years has shown to be very sensitive to the creative side of game design and has taken very explicit steps to not ruin the long-term potential of various franchises by exploiting them in the short-term. Only time will tell where we go from here, but my money is on the general public getting Call of Duty fatigue after this year's Modern Warfare 2, no matter how intriguing a worldwide Cold War game sounds.