Even after 20 years of annual releases, Call of Duty devs would "all be dead lying if we said we weren't worried" about releasing 2 Black Ops games in a row

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty is the fountain of youth; playing any one of its 50-or-so installments seems to bring you right back to your first time with the FPS franchise, which never seems to run out. But, apparently, it's starting to get old, as Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 devs are concerned the game might be too similar to Black Ops 6.

When CharlieIntel (by way of Dexerto) asked Yale Miller, senior director of production at developer Treyarch, if he was concerned that Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 might appear interchangeable, he responded affirmatively. "I think the honest answer is yes. I worry about that," Miller says in the new interview. "Obviously, there was a plan with the two MW games and then this."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 both also came out in succession, in 2022 and 2023, and the Infinity Ward games were meant as sequels to 2019's Modern Warfare reboot – not to be confused with the original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from 2007, Modern Warfare 2 from 2009, or Modern Warfare 3 from 2011. Anyway.

Similarly, Black Ops 6 released in 2024, while Black Ops 7 is set to launch on November 14, 2025, just over a year later, looking very much the same.

"We'll see what the franchise does in the future," Miller tells CharlieIntel. "We're excited about the opportunities it gave us, but we'd all be dead lying if we said we weren't worried about that."

Black Ops 7 is fighting franchise fatigue in the most unexpected of ways with an ambitious co-op adventure which Treyarch believes can "redefine what campaign can be in Call of Duty."

Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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