Andy Payne, OBE and chairman of trade body UKIE stated today that the newly established Activision Leeds studio is responsible for “all handheld [and] iOS versions of Call of Duty” going forward.
“But… they’re very good, and you know what, what people don’t realise with Activision is, the two studios working on the Call of Duty franchise are collaborative studios. That’s unheard of. All the assets are reusable, so they’re not wasting time.
And those assets are also going to be starting to be used by the mobile team, which is going to be based in Leeds.”
Payne did clarify that he wasn’t sure if Activision Leeds was developing the upcoming Vita shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified. On an interesting side note, however, he did clarify that a number of former Rockstar employees are now working for the new Leeds studio.
“[Activision] kind of always wanted to get the Rockstar team,” said Payne, referring the Rockstar Leeds studio responsible for the portable GTA games for PSP, DS and iOS.
*UPDATE*
According to CVG, the odds of an Activision Leeds helmed CoD: BO Declassified are very slim. This is due to the fact that Activision Leeds is not yet official, and the team is no more than a handful of people.
It appears that if Leeds were the principle developer of Declassified, it would take at least another 18 months for the game to be released. No one knows the release date and details of the game just yet, but CVG has some pretty compelling arguments as to why Declassified may have a different developer.
source | videogamer
