Activision is planning at least four more years of annual Call of Duty games

Activision has Call of Duty games planned through till at least 2027, all maintaining the annual release model.

That's according to Activision president Rob Kostich, speaking to VentureBeat in a new interview earlier this week. "We're constantly in our planning phase, our long-term planning phase. Right now, we have games planned out all the way through '27 for the things that we’re working on," Kostich said, putting it pretty plainly.

VentureBeat inquired about how many developers were working on Call of Duty at Activision right now. The outlet recalls that the figure once supposedly stood at around 2,000 developers from 10 different studios, a gargantuan undertaking no matter how well organized a development pipeline is.

Kostich revealed that it's actually more than that - 3,000 developers are working on Call of Duty around the world. The Activision president also revealed that Call of Duty games still operate with one developer as the lead, with other studios in a supporting role backing up the main studio. Infinity Ward might lead one game for example, while Toys for Bob could be supporting them.

Kostich also touched on AI briefly. "For us, the way we look at it right now honestly is just how does it help us make better games," he said. "There's a lot of really interesting applications, a lot of tools that are coming to the forefront, a lot of them that still need to be vetted quite frankly, in a lot of ways, but we're always looking at how does it just help us make better games."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is set to launch later this year on November 10, but if you pre-order the Vault Edition, you can get access to the campaign one week earlier. 

Check out our Modern Warfare 3 open beta guide for how to get in on the beta, and when it all kicks off.