Call of Duty 2019 Will Be Announced Today

In a teaser tweet yesterday, Activision confirmed that Call of Duty 2019, most likely to be titled “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” will be revealed tomorrow at 10:00 AM PST, 1:00 PM EST, and 6:00 PM BST.

The official Call of Duty YouTube channel accidentally revealed the premier thumbnail. Users from Reddit were quick to capture some quick stills from the trailer. This includes the likely release date to be October 18^th. Fans also captured some stills of the cover art and series protagonist Captain Price.

Going Dark pic.twitter.com/gysaUrs0qt

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) May 29, 2019

An October 18^th release date also serves as an Easter Egg when lined up with a May 30^th announcement date. A prominent Special Operations unit featured throughout the Modern Warfare trilogy is Task Force 141 and there are exactly 141 days between May 30^th and October 18^th.

What can we expect in the reveal?

While the reveal trailer is only 1 minute and 53 seconds long, Infinity Ward is also likely to provide some insight into the story and the gameplay mechanics. Last week, Infinity Ward invited several prominent CoD YouTubers to their studio to watch the trailer. Hopefully this means that they allowed YouTubers to capture some game content. Regardless, Infinity Ward wouldn’t bring everybody to their studio just to show them the trailer.

Up until now, leaks about CoD 2019 have been plentiful, but inconsistent (as most leaks are). What we know is that movement will remain consistent with other Modern Warfare games. The game will also have a Co-op mode as well as a campaign that will likely take place around the events of Modern Warfare 2. Several gun staples of the Modern Warfare Trilogy will also make a return.

Among other interesting rumors are that Activision has ditched exclusivity rights for PlayStation. This could mark a change to how all DLC content is managed for this game. Several other leaks have stated that much of the DLC content will be free to all players. However, the game will likely still have a Season Pass and microtransactions.

What’s happening to Call of Duty going forward?

The Call of Duty fan base has long yearned for a classic Call of Duty similar to the titles of the early 2010s. After dancing around that idea with the past couple of titles, Infinity Ward seems to be heading straight back to the classics with this game. This is long overdue judging by years of underwhelming sales, especially this year for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

Moreover, about 2 weeks ago, Activision sources confirmed to Kotaku that Treyarch will take over development of Call of Duty’s annual title that will be released in the Fall of 2020 instead of Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software. Call of Duty has employed a 3-year alternating Call of Duty development cycle between Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and Sledgehammer since Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 in 2012. This will break that cycle.

From from 2007 to 2012, the Call of Duty franchise’s developer alternated just between Infinity Ward and Treyarch. This looks to be the case again, at least for the immediate term.

Activision has not completely removed Sledgehammer and Raven from Call of Duty 2020’s development. The two will likely still develop most of the Campaign for the game, reportedly centering on a Cold War motif. However, they will now mostly be providing support to Treyarch.