Call of Duty 2027 is reportedly "a new sub-franchise" that ditches Zombies and potentially brings back a classic system

Yes, yes, I know - we don't even know what next year's Call of Duty game is yet (although it's likely a new Modern Warfare game from Infinity Ward, from the reports I've been reading). But already, details about 2027's CoD are emerging from a prominent leaker. The insider claims that it'll be Sledgehammer Games' turn to take the wheel with a "new sub-franchise," which does line up with Activision's recent announcement that it was halting back-to-back series releases like it's recently done with Modern Warfare 2 and 3, then Black Ops 6 and 7. However, some of the leaker's other revelations are much more surprising.

While I personally think that Black Ops 7 is the best Call of Duty we've had in a long while (the bar was admittedly fairly low, save for its predecessor), there's no escaping the fact that Activision and Microsoft are under pressure. BO7 appears to be falling below expectations, with the likes of Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders giving the series its biggest challenge in a long while. This has instigated a major change in Activision's future plans, confirming last week that it'll stop pushing out consecutive FPS games from the same Call of Duty universes. Black Ops 7 is a great game, but it doesn't have quite the same impact or freshness due to it coming off the back of a predecessor so similar in terms of tone and gameplay.

With 2026's game rumored to be Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward, that means that 2027's game will either be another Black Ops game, a sequel to or reboot of an older, standalone CoD, or something totally original. According to well-known leaker 'TheGhostOfHope,' it's apparently that final option.

"CoD 2027 made by Sledgehammer Games will be a new sub-franchise with completely new characters set in the late 1990s/early 2000s," they claim in a post on X. While Sledgehammer has leant support on several games over the last few years, the project it led most recently was 2023's Modern Warfare 3, although a lot of the game was a continuation of what Infinity Ward made the year previously with Modern Warfare 2. The 2000s also remains a relatively unexplored era for Call of Duty, so this would be interesting to see.

TheGhostOfHope also alleges that the 2027 game will feature the Omnimovement system that debuted in BO6, but without the tactical sprint and wall-jump elements that were added for Black Ops 7. Sledgehammer is responsible for one of my all-time favorite CoDs, the 'jet pack era' classic that is Advanced Warfare, but we never got to see the studio flex its muscles with a dynamic movement system again. Its subsequent projects were Call of Duty WW2 and Vanguard, both of which were firmly boots-on-the-ground. A new spin on Omnimovement sounds like a decent middle ground - if the leaks about the era are correct, we won't have jetpacks and wall-jumping, but it's not going to be a slow, rooted experience either.

CoD 2027 will also reportedly ditch a Zombies mode altogether, but will bring back MW3's Get High mode, which was essentially an obstacle course experience to test your parkour skills. The return of Get High would lend further credence to more zippy, Omnimovement-based traversal being in the game.

Finally, the most exciting but in my opinion questionable claim from TheGhostOfHope: "Pick 10 returning is a big discussion happening." The loadout system featured in the first four Black Ops games and Infinite Warfare, Pick 10 involves you spending ten points on individual elements for your loadout, including guns, attachments, perks, and throwables. It was a great system that forced you into mastering certain playstyles and playing to your strengths, as opposed to the massively bloated loadout system that we see in Call of Duty today.

Maybe it could return as part of a standalone playlist or limited-time event, but I personally don't see a world where Pick 10 is adopted for Call of Duty multiplayer, largely due to its connections to Warzone. This is certainly the one point in the leaker's post that has got me scratching my head a bit, and doesn't check out as well as everything else they claim. So, as is always the case with anything unofficial, take this all with a grain of salt.

Anyway, that's all in the distant future - I'm more intrigued to see if Activision can give Black Ops 7 a boost and attract more players to it, and to learn what Infinity Ward is cooking up for next year.