After Black Ops 7's weaker launch, Call of Duty will no longer do back-to-back releases in the same series

The soft response to Call of Duty's latest release, Black Ops 7, continues to affect change in the long-running series. As announced on the official CoD blog today, Activision will no longer make back-to-back Call of Duty games in the same series.

The news comes off the back of a weaker than usual year for the franchise, which saw the release of Black Ops 7 just a year after Black Ops 6. Before that, it made a reboot of Modern Warfare 3 in 2023 just a year after its reboot of Modern Warfare 2 (2022). The repetition has created a strong sense of fatigue among parts of the player base, which Activision cited (indirectly) as a factor of today's decision.

"We will no longer do back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games. The reasons are many, but the main one is to ensure we provide an absolutely unique experience each and every year.

We will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental. While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right," the blog reads.

"To be clear, the future of Call of Duty is very strong and we believe our best days are ahead of us given the depth and talent of our development teams. We have been building the next era of Call of Duty, and it will deliver precisely on what you want along with some surprises that push the Franchise and the genre forward. We look forward to welcoming you in, listening to you, and moving forward together."

While the company reinforced that it's fully committed to supporting Black Ops 7 with seasonal updates, the first of which is already underway, the tone of the announcement is in keeping with past acknowledgements that Activision got it wrong with Black Ops 7 and wants to win people back.

That process began before Black Ops 7's actual launch, when beta feedback led the developer to loosen skill-based matchmaking for the first time ever, as well as cancel planned crossover cosmetics plans to address CoD's ugliness epidemic. Committing to "unique" games every year is a positive step, but it stops short of confronting the real source of CoD fatigue: annual releases. As of now, we assume Call of Duty 23 is planned for 2026.