Infinity Ward, the developers of Call of Duty: Ghosts, the most recent installment to the ever-expanding Call of Duty franchise will be merging with Neversoft, the developers behind Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the recent Guitar Hero games to form one big “super studio” as confirmed in a recent interview with Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision.

“As you know, Neversoft and Infinity Ward teamed up for the development of Call of Duty: Ghosts,” wrote Hirshberg. “And through that process, it became clear that the two studios have very complementary skill sets. Between these two excellent studios, it seemed like a single ‘super-studio’ could emerge.” “As already mentioned, we are merging these two very talented teams and obviously had to choose a name for the combined studio. Since the Infinity Ward brand is indelibly tied to the Call of Duty franchise, it is the sensible choice. While it will be strange to not see the Neversoft logo on future games, the important things–which are the Neversoft team’s talent, creativity, professionalism and commitment to creative excellence–all remain unchanged as part of this new chapter.”

Eric Hirshberg – CEO of Activision

In this change, the Neversoft studio name will be retired while the new “super-studio” will be referenced simply as Infinity Ward.

Neversoft recently helped Infinity Ward with their recent title – Call of Duty: Ghosts, in which they helped out with Extinction mode, Infinity Ward’s own “horde” mode, following in the success of Treyarch’s Zombie mode from their titles.

This is exciting news for gamers. With more developers joining Infinity Ward to help make their next title which is likely to release in 2016, after the recently announced Sledgehammer Games joined the mix to produce Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This means that the franchise will now have a three-year developer cycle.

Source: Giant Bomb