Warzone Will Be The Connection Between Yearly Call of Duty Releases

Activision’s experiment with making a free to play Battle Royale has apparently been successful enough for them to continue with it going forward.  As the company has revealed that millions and millions of players have logged on to play free-to-play Warzone modes, it’s sounding like it will be included and updated on a yearly basis.

In a recent interview, Infinity Ward’s Taylor Kurosaki explained that other Warzone will be the “through-line” for the Call of Duty franchise:  “Call of Duty has been on a very regular cadence for many, many years,” Kurosaki said.  “Warzone has made us rethink exactly how best to release content and how to integrate it.”  “Warzone will be the through-line that connects all of the different various sub-franchisees of Call of Duty.  It’s going to be really cool to see how the different sub-franchisees sort of come in and out of focus, but Warzone will be the one constant.”

It will be interesting to see how Warzone changes from year to year.   Will it be themed according to the current Call of Duty game, be it the Modern Warfare or Black Ops parts of the franchise, or will it change whole cloth.  Treyarch, the other big development studio making Call of Duty games tried their hands at a Battle Royale with Blackout in Black Ops 4.  While relatively well-received it didn’t quite have the huge success that Warzone did.

With that said, Warzone will be making it’s way to the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox.  According to Kurosaki, it sounds like the Call of Duty Battle Royale will be available on launch day for the new tech.  Warzone hasn’t been out long, but since it released in March the free download has reached 30 million players in a very short time.  Like other popular Battle Royale games like Fortnite, PUBG, and others, the rules are similar players trying to avoid a closing circle while staying alive.