News: Becoming part of Activision Blizzard will not slow down Activision's big franchises any.
File this one under the "duh" category. A second press release detailing the pairing of Activision and Vivendi Games has revealed that Activision is already hard at work on sequels to many of their biggest franchises.
According to the press release, Activision's current release pipeline includes Guitar Hero IV, Call of Duty 5, James Bond, new Tony Hawk, new Dreamworks titles, new Marvel titles and entry into racing with Bizarre.
Some of these games were already known to be in development. Activision has said they have two James Bond titles in development and one, maybe both, are being developed by Treyarch. Guitarist Joe Perry also previously said that
Guitar Hero IV would be an all-Aerosmith affair. While that's doubtful, a new Guitar Hero was a certainty.
But we can also infer a few things from these announcements:
Call of Duty 5 will likely not be developed by Infinity Ward. If there's one thing IW doesn't do, it's a quick turnaround, and CoD5 is likely coming next year.
Dreamworks' next movie is called Kung Fu Panda. Hmm, a punching panda, that's just tailor-made for the video game treatment.
The major question mark is the "new Marvel titles." Those could almost be anything because Activision owns the publishing rights to the X-Men, Spider-Man and games set in the whole "Marvel universe" like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
We'll have more on all of these big franchise sequels soon.
