Activision didn't want Modern Warfare

Infinity Ward has claimed that it wanted to get away from the World War II setting long before it eventually started working on Modern Warfare in earnest, but was blocked by Activision - who didn't believe a modern combat game would sell on consoles enough to be justifiable.

Chatting to Official PlayStation Magazine, Infinity War boss Vince Zampella said that the developer was desperate to start working on consoles too, but Activision again blocked their requests by claiming that IW were predominantly a PC developer.

In the end, Zampella claims, Infinity Ward only worked on Call of Duty 2 in order to get hold of development consoles and begin moving away from being a PC-only developer.

"We were dead set against [IW's next game] being World War II," Zampella said, "but Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we'd get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game (Call of Duty 2)."

"We always wanted to be on consoles and Activision saw us as more of a PC developer."

Zampella also said that Activision really pulled out the stops to try and stop the team making Modern Warfare, pulling out all sorts of market research to show that a modern combat shooter would not sell as well as a World War II game.

Show's what Activision knows though; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare went on to sell more that 14 million units and the sequel has proven so exciting that other publishers are changing their holiday schedules to avoid releasing games opposite it.

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