Activision cooks CoD with no Spark
New Call of Duty console title due later this year, but Finest Hour dev Spark Unlimited is busy making next-gen games for Atari instead.
Activision has revealed that it plans to release a new Call of Duty title "for consoles" this autumn, but will be doing so without the help of Spark Unlimited, the developer behind Call of Duty's only console release to date, Finest Hour.
The new CoD will be developed by internal studios Gray Matter (developer of Call of Duty PC expansion pack United Offensive) and Treyarch (developer of Spider-Man 2) and an E3 unveiling is more or less certain given the timing.
Meanwhile Spark, for its part, has signed an exclusive deal with rival publisher Atari, which now boasts the worldwide rights to all its future titles - the first of which will be a next-generation console effort due out in time for Christmas 2006.
"Atari will seek to foster new ideas and concepts for future forms of entertainment by drawing upon Spark's long standing relationships and experiences across a broad array of entertainment realms," a company statement read.
Atari and Spark's first joint project will be "an intellectual property with full multimedia potential, which Atari will look to exploit in film, television and consumer products," it added.
Spark's Call of Duty title, Finest Hour, was a top ten seller in the run-up to Christmas, and the team has a collective history of working on Medal of Honor titles dating back to the PlayStation.