Sledgehammer Games is new to this hype. Partnering with Activision awhile back on a canceled third person Call of Duty game could have been intimidating for the developer, but they kept stride. Assisting Infinity Ward on Modern Warfare 3 seems to have paid off for this new franchise developer. Releasing next week, Advanced Warfare has a lot riding on it. Being the newest of the Call of Duty games comes with a heavy burden but even more burden comes from this being Sledgehammer’s first solo game.
Even though we have seen Infinity Ward and Treyarch put out billion dollar games year after year, one bad game could really derail the yearly CoD movement. As the years have progresses since the original Modern Warfare, fans expectations have grown astronomically and really the franchise hasn’t delivered. After a sub-par Ghosts release, we could see Advanced Warfare release to some of the lowest numbers in the franchises history.
Michael Condrey, co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, recently sat down with our friends over at Polygon and had these words to say:
“Yeah, there is a lot of pressure. I was thinking about it the other day,” Condrey explained. “So like the New England Patriots. Tom Brady. The winningest Super Bowl team in the past decade. Those poor bastards, they have to win the Super Bowl every year or they’ve failed, right? … And so for us, it’s a little bit like that. … There’s some pressure with that, I won’t lie.”
Condrey went on to say, “I would like to think this is the first Advanced Warfare.” Call of Duty fans aren’t surprised by the news that Advanced Warfare could become a series and the new three year development cycle, per studio, could prove to be advantageous for better content to be placed inside these games.
The current plan is to have Sledgehammer Games move into a bigger studio and increase their staff from 200 to 250 people.
We could see Advanced Warfare 2 around 2017 but for now, Advanced Warfare releases on November 4th (or again, November 3rd if you have the Day Zero Edition).
Check out this thank you video from the studio!
