Whilst the news is hotting up over this years Call of Duty instalment – Advanced Warfare, there has been a major change to affect Call of Duty: Ghosts developers Infinity Ward and NeverSoft who joined forces to create Ghosts. It has been discovered that Activision are merging the two studios into one solid Infinity Ward, and the NeverSoft name will not be incorporated in anyway despite Infinity Never having quite a nice ring to it! It’s not happening, nor is Infinity Soft!
Here’s some snippets of an Activision Internal Memo as acquired by GiantBomb:
“As you know, Neversoft and Infinity Ward teamed up for the development of Call of Duty: Ghosts,” wrote Hirshberg. “And through that process, it became clear that the two studios have very complementary skill sets. Between these two excellent studios, it seemed like a single ‘super-studio’ could emerge.”
Relating to NeverSoft:
“The impact of their 20-year run of hard work and success cannot be overstated,” said Hirshberg. “As already mentioned, we are merging these two very talented teams and obviously had to choose a name for the combined studio. Since the Infinity Ward brand is indelibly tied to the Call of Duty franchise, it is the sensible choice. While it will be strange to not see the Neversoft logo on future games, the important things–which are the Neversoft team’s talent, creativity, professionalism and commitment to creative excellence–all remain unchanged as part of this new chapter.”
Dave Stohl, currently the executive VP of worldwide studios for Activision, has been assigned to lead this new studio whilst The current studio head, Steve Ackrich, will take on another leadership role. However, over at NeverSoft, both studio head Joel Jewett and studio director Scott Pease, will retire later this year having been part of the studio for twenty years!
There was no word about how the merger would affect the development of their next Call of Duty and it’s official title.
