Activision: "We want Infinity Ward to be Infinity Ward"

Activision's Worldwide Studios head Dave Stohl has reasserted that beleaguered studio Infinity Ward will rise again, and that the publisher does not intend to meddle with it further.

Claiming that a number of the lead roles abandoned by the mass walk-outs earlier this year would be filled by internal promotion, he asserted that Activision would not be mandating the Call of Duty team's new make-up.

"As much as possible we don't want to tamper with that group of people," he told Develop, observing that although vacated positions had seen a vast number of applicants, "a lot of people who are really passionate about their job are still there."

"We want Infinity Ward to be Infinity Ward. It's a very specific culture. I'm one hundred per cent confident that the studio will come back to what it was. Ultimately, Infinity Ward will rise from the ashes."

Stohl also discussed the massed redundancies across Activision in February, claiming that despite the general financial health of the company, "The development of projects has got so big that we, by necessity, have to look at some parts of the business and admit they are not as big as they want to be."

Referring to the closures of Red Octane, Luxoflux and Underground Entertainment and the loss of an estimated 300 staff company-wide as an inevitability, he claimed that "Layoffs happened across the entire industry, and everywhere else."