Following the events of yesterday's Infinity Ward firings, Activision formed a new business unit dedicated to producing one new Call of Duty game annually. Their first announced game that we didn't already know about is a 2011 Call of Duty game in development at the newly formed Sledgehammer Games.

A press release hit the wires just moments ago, detailing the news. The company reiterated that the Treyarch-developed Call of Duty game in production is due out this fall, while two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2 are set to release sometime in 2010.

The new game at Sledgehammer "will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre," according to the press release. Sledgehammer is run by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, both Dead Space developer veterans.

The Call of Duty business unit falls under Philip Earl's jurisdiction. Earl currently manages Activision's Asia Pacific region. In that same paragraph, Activision confirmed that "Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward."

The last piece of the Activision press release says that the company is focusing on "a select number of partners" to bring the Call of Duty Franchise to Asia, "one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games."

This story, "Activision Forms Call of Duty Business Unit" was originally published by GamePro .