Sledgehammer Games, the guys that co-developed Modern Warfare 3 with Infinity Ward announced on Twitter yesterday that they get to take a crack at developing Call of Duty's 2014 release solo this time. Should we start naming Call of Duty games by year like they're sports games, yet?

While I appreciate the excitement in the tweet, stating that their Call of Duty game will be "A new era" left me with a sigh as I recalled that exact line being dropped while everyone was talking about Call of Duty:Ghosts 6 months ago. While I'm not the kind of person to blindly hate a franchise, the non Treyarch Call of Duty games have been a little disappointing in the past few years. Even with that, I still have some reservoir of hope somewhere in my mind saying that Call of Duty could have an actually amazing game some day.

The Explanation behind this years Call of Duty not being made by Infinity Ward or Treyarch like most would expect is that Call of Duty is on a 3 year cycle now, with developers getting 3 years to develop their game rather than the usual two. One would hope this extra time spent developing these Call of Duty games would contribute to the games improving in quality, but Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg was quoted as saying the 3 dev cycle would give "more time to focus on DLC and micro-DLC."

Yikes. At least he isn't making the game.

"Looking forward to 2014, as both Bobby [Kotick] and I have said, we have a superlative game in the works, and that we have some new approaches this year that we think are going to be very positive with the three-year development cycle -- with the injection of some new creative leadership from some very talented folks at Sledgehammer Games, and we think that the 2014 game is going to be one of, if not the best, Call of Duty game ever."