Call of Duty: WWII — Sledgehammer’s 3-year journey to bring Call of Duty back

Michael Condrey, studio head and cofounder of Sledgehammer Games, has just completed a three-year march to take Call of Duty back to the Second World War. Condrey and his co-studio head Glen Schofield led a team of 300 developers at Sledgehammer and another 200 elsewhere at Activision to complete Call of Duty: WWII, the reboot of the first-person shooter series that returns the game to infantry combat.

Getting the reboot right is important. The franchise has sold more than 250 million units and $15 billion in sales since 2003. On average, that is more than 17 million units and $1 billion worth sold per year. Selling any less than that in a given year is considered a failure, according to Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Call of Duty: Ghosts were weak performers. At the high end of the spectrum was Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which sold 26 million units, and Sledgehammer’s own previous title, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, sold 22 million units, Pachter said.