Call of Duty Vanguard is coming to current and next-gen consoles with a setting ‘fans know and love’

This year’s premium Call of Duty game will be released for current and next-gen consoles, Activision has confirmed.

The next mainline series entry, which VGC understands to be Call of Duty: Vanguard, is being developed by Sledgehammer Games.

Discussing the officially unnamed title during Activision Blizzard’s second quarter earnings call on Tuesday, president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre said the game is still scheduled for release during the fourth quarter of 2021.

“Our teams remain hard at work on the next new premium Call of Duty release, planned for the fourth quarter,” he said. “From a setting that our fans know and love to an incredible amount of content in development including an extensive live ops schedule, we believe this release will be incredibly well received.

“In addition to launching a great seamless experience for both current and next-gen console players, we are focused on continuing to integrate Warzone and engaging our direct relationship with our player base through even deeper content integration between the premium and free experiences and substantial innovation coming within Warzone itself.

“Our teams cannot wait to unveil what we’ve been working on,” Alegre concluded.

Later in the call, Activision president Rob Kostich also said the company feels “really good” about what Sledgehammer is working on.

“The studio itself has never been bigger or stronger, now with its teams in Foster City and Melbourne and also now in Toronto.

“And across all modes of play, across multiplayer, across campaign and across co-op, development is coming along really well and we’re going to be sharing those details with the community very soon.

“Content wise, it’s a really robust game at launch across all the modes, and the good news for us right now is, we’ve gotten farther ahead on our live ops planning for supporting the community post-launch, and the community should also expect that support to be very, very significant.

“We also have really exciting new plans for Warzone, which Raven is leading,” Kostich added. “Now together with our premium release, we have some really fun, and what I consider the most significant updates, planned for the community across both Warzone and premium as we head into the fall.”

Further reading

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Call of Duty: Vanguard is skipping E3 as Warzone prepares for World War II

World War II-themed entry will add the most significant Warzone tie-in yet, including a new map

Vanguard is expected to be officially revealed later in the summer, likely via an in-game event in free-to-play Warzone, as Black Ops Cold War was last year.

It will feature a campaign, multiplayer and Zombies modes set in the European and Pacific theatres of World War II, with its plot centring around the birth of modern allied Special Forces, according to VGC’s sources.

It will also launch alongside an entirely new Warzone map said to be set in the Pacific theatre and significantly larger than the current Verdansk map.

During Tuesday’s earnings call, Activision also announced the formation of an internal mobile studio, which is working a new entry in the Call of Duty series.