How much will Activision say about new Call of Duty on Monday?

Activision Blizzard has been launching a new Call of Duty game every November for the past few years. So gamers are getting anxious about the release of information about this year’s title.

Since the video game publisher releases earnings on Monday, gamers are hoping that the new Call of Duty game, the latest in a series of best-selling first-person-shooter combat games, will be announced that day. The E3 trade show is also approaching in June and Activision Blizzard has typically released a video trailer of the next game at Microsoft’s E3 press conference, which takes place on June 7.

Activision Blizzard has begun to tease the title in video game magazines such as The Official PlayStation Magazine. But the details are light. The title could be a Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 game, which is believed to be in the works at the company’s Infinity Ward studio.

This year’s game will face some serious competition from Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3, which is expected to launch in the fall. But Call of Duty remains the game to beat. Call of Duty Black Ops has generated more than $1 billion in revenues for Activision Blizzard since its launch in November. Rock Paper Shotgun, a game blog, started spreading a rumor that Call of Duty Online, a massively multiplayer game or some kind of browser-based shooter game, will be announced on Monday. We don’t know what will happen, but it’s typical for Activision Blizzard to start slowly revealing its Call of Duty plans during its earnings calls.

Meanwhile, I’m busy playing Call of Duty Black Ops Escalation multiplayer map pack, which launched last week. At any given time, there are around 300,000 people playing online when I log into the game. That means that players are engaged in the game still, more than six months after the Black Ops title shipped in November.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.