Infinity Ward started in 2002 when Grant Collier, Jason West, and Vince Zampella left 2015, Inc., the studio that had just shipped Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Electronic Arts. All 22 of the studio's original members came from that team, and Activision put up the money to get the new studio running before buying it outright in 2003. The plan was simple enough. Take the World War II shooter they had already proven they could make and build it around a squad instead of a lone hero.
That idea became Call of Duty, and Infinity Ward has been tied to the series ever since. The studio is based in Woodland Hills, California, with additional studios in Austin, Texas, Kraków, Poland, Mexico City, and Barcelona, and it now sits under Activision inside Microsoft's Xbox division.
The original Call of Duty landed on PC in October 2003 and felt different from every other World War II shooter on the shelf. Allied soldiers fought alongside the player and died in scripted moments that made every beach and village feel crowded. The campaign split its time between American, British, and Soviet soldiers, and the Stalingrad missions carried a weight Medal of Honor never really went for.
Call of Duty 2 followed in 2005 and launched alongside the Xbox 360, which turned a PC hit into a console series almost overnight. It also swapped health packs for regenerating health, a change plenty of shooters copied afterward. Treyarch handled Call of Duty 3 in 2006, and that handoff started a two-studio alternation that grew into a three-year rotation by 2014. Treyarch later broke the strict pattern by taking both 2024 and 2025.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 is where Infinity Ward stopped being a World War II studio. The campaign moved to a fictional conflict in the Middle East and Russia and introduced Captain John Price, Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish, and Imran Zakhaev. The AC-130 mission Death From Above and the sniper level All Ghillied Up still come up any time Call of Duty missions get ranked, and the nuke in Shock and Awe was a gut punch for a series that had always kept its playable soldiers alive.
Multiplayer mattered even more. Create-a-class, perks, killstreaks, and prestige all came out of Call of Duty 4, and the leveling loop it built is still the backbone of the series nearly 20 years later. Plenty of shooters since then have borrowed that structure outright, some without even bothering to change the names.
Modern Warfare 2 launched in November 2009, and Activision reported around $310 million in sales and about 4.7 million copies sold in North America and the United Kingdom on day one alone. The campaign gave the series Simon "Ghost" Riley, Gary "Roach" Sanderson, and Vladimir Makarov, and it ended with General Shepherd shooting Ghost and Roach and setting their bodies on fire. Ghost's death still comes up constantly in lore discussions, partly because the reboot turned him into the face of the franchise.
No Russian is the mission that defined the game's reputation. The player goes undercover with Makarov during an airport massacre, and Infinity Ward put a content warning with a skip option in front of it. People still argue over whether the level earned its place or just existed to shock, but the fact that the studio built an escape hatch into it says the team knew exactly how far it was pushing.
Less than four months after Modern Warfare 2 broke sales records, Activision fired Jason West and Vince Zampella in March 2010, citing breaches of contract and insubordination. West and Zampella sued over unpaid royalties and control of the Modern Warfare name, and a group of current and former Infinity Ward developers filed their own suit over withheld bonuses. The legal fight dragged on until settlements in 2012.
West and Zampella founded Respawn Entertainment in 2010 with backing from Electronic Arts, and a large chunk of Infinity Ward's senior staff followed them out the door over the next several months. Respawn went on to make Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, so a good part of the modern shooter landscape traces back to the same office that made Call of Duty 4. Infinity Ward had to rebuild almost from scratch while still owing Activision a Modern Warfare 3.
Modern Warfare 3 shipped in 2011 with Sledgehammer Games co-developing and Raven Software pitching in, which was the only realistic way to finish the original trilogy on schedule after the exodus. It closed out the Makarov story with Soap dying in Prague and Price finally hanging Makarov from the ceiling of the Hotel Oasis in Dubai, an ending the whole trilogy had been building toward.
Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013 started a new story with brothers Logan and Hesh Walker and Riley the dog, and it was a launch title for both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2013. The cliffhanger ending with Gabriel Rorke never got a sequel, which still bugs the people who liked that cast. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare followed in 2016 and took the series into space with Nick Reyes as the lead and Kit Harington as the villain Salen Kotch. The reveal trailer racked up millions of dislikes on YouTube from fans who wanted boots on the ground again, but the campaign got a much warmer reception once people actually played it. The Legacy, Digital Deluxe, and Legacy Pro editions of Infinite Warfare also included Modern Warfare Remastered, which Raven Software rebuilt from Call of Duty 4.
The 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare rebooted the whole storyline. Barry Sloane took over as Captain Price, and the campaign leaned into a grounded, uncomfortable tone with characters like Farah Karim and Kyle "Gaz" Garrick. It was also the first Call of Duty with full crossplay between PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Call of Duty: Warzone arrived in March 2020 as a free battle royale built on Modern Warfare and co-developed with Raven Software. The timing lined up with pandemic lockdowns, and Warzone turned into a second pillar for the series that every Call of Duty since has had to plug into.
Modern Warfare II in 2022 brought Ghost and Soap back under Task Force 141 and added Alejandro Vargas and Valeria Garza to the cast. Infinity Ward launched Warzone 2.0 and DMZ alongside it, and DMZ built a loyal following despite technically never leaving beta. Modern Warfare III in 2023 closed out the reboot trilogy, with Sledgehammer Games leading that one and Infinity Ward co-developing.
Modern Warfare II also took heat for slowing player movement down, and that criticism followed the studio straight into its next project.
Microsoft closed its Activision Blizzard acquisition on October 13, 2023, which put Infinity Ward under the Xbox umbrella along with Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software. Treyarch took the 2024 and 2025 slots with Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7, giving Infinity Ward a longer runway than it usually gets. Black Ops 7 had a rough run against Battlefield 6.
Infinity Ward is run by co-studio heads Mark Grigsby and Jack O'Hara, and both are longtime Infinity Ward people. Grigsby started at the studio as an animator in 2005 and had a stint at Respawn before returning in 2017 as animation director. O'Hara joined in 2012 in production and worked his way up through production and game direction. The two became co-heads in 2023.
Their pitch for Modern Warfare 4 is that gameplay comes first. Grigsby has openly said the team took the Modern Warfare II movement complaints to heart and built the new game around much freer movement, which is not something studio heads usually admit about their own last release.
Vince Zampella died on December 21, 2025, in a single-car crash on the Angeles Crest Highway north of Los Angeles. A passenger in the car also died. Zampella was 55, and at the time he was running Respawn and overseeing the Battlefield franchise at EA. O'Hara told IGN that a lot of people at Infinity Ward knew him personally and took the news hard.
Modern Warfare 4 became the first new mainline Call of Duty to release after his death, and despite the ugly split in 2010, its campaign credits include an "In memoriam, Vince Zampella" screen, with his name first in a tribute list for people who died during the game's production. The studio he co-founded is still running on the template he and West set up back in 2003.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 released on October 23, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. It skipped PlayStation 4 and Xbox One entirely, and it was the first new mainline Call of Duty since the Microsoft deal to skip day-one Game Pass, a clear reversal from Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7. Under Activision's policy of adding new Call of Duty games the holiday after launch, Modern Warfare 4 isn't expected on Game Pass until Holiday 2027.
The campaign moves to the Korean Peninsula with Captain Price back in the lead, and Grigsby and O'Hara have said they picked modern Korea because no major shooter had built a campaign around it. O'Hara also admitted he had watched a lot of Korean TV on Netflix during development, which is a funnier origin story for a war game setting than anyone expected. DMZ returned at launch, and full Warzone integration followed with Season 1 on November 6, 2026.
Reviews have been mostly positive, especially for the campaign. Circana data shared by Mat Piscatella for the week ending October 24, 2026 showed Call of Duty played by 17 percent of tracked active Xbox users worldwide and 19 percent of tracked US PlayStation users, down from 29 percent and 23 percent in Black Ops 7's launch week ending November 15, 2025. US Steam went the other direction, climbing to 4.2 percent from 1.5 percent.
Infinity Ward's biggest contribution outside of multiplayer might be its characters. Captain John Price has anchored nearly every Modern Warfare game, voiced by Billy Murray in the original trilogy and by Barry Sloane in the reboot. Ghost became a fan favorite despite only getting a handful of scenes in the original Modern Warfare 2, and his skull mask turned into an icon big enough to carry crossover skins and merchandise for years.
Soap MacTavish went from a silent protagonist in Call of Duty 4 to a voiced lead in Modern Warfare 2 before dying in Modern Warfare 3, and the reboot brought him back with plenty of Scottish swagger. Vladimir Makarov keeps returning as the series' main villain, and the reboot rebuilt him as the target Task Force 141 chases all the way into Modern Warfare III.
Infinity Ward's releases, including co-developed titles, run in this order: Call of Duty (2003), Call of Duty 2 (2005), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011, with Sledgehammer Games), Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013), Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty: Warzone (2020, with Raven Software), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023, with lead studio Sledgehammer Games), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (2026). The studio has also supported ongoing Warzone seasons between its own releases.
Grant Collier, Jason West, and Vince Zampella founded Infinity Ward in 2002. All 22 original members came from the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault team at 2015, Inc.
Mark Grigsby and Jack O'Hara are the co-studio heads of Infinity Ward. Both are longtime studio veterans who took over in 2023.
Infinity Ward is owned by Activision, which became part of Microsoft's Xbox division when Microsoft closed its Activision Blizzard acquisition in October 2023.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, released October 23, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Sledgehammer Games led Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III in 2023, with Infinity Ward co-developing. Infinity Ward led the original Modern Warfare 3 in 2011, with Sledgehammer co-developing.
Activision fired both in March 2010, citing breaches of contract and insubordination. They sued Activision and went on to found Respawn Entertainment with EA backing, and the lawsuits were settled in 2012.
Infinity Ward is based in Woodland Hills, California, with additional studios in Austin, Texas, Kraków, Poland, Mexico City, and Barcelona.
Modern Warfare 4 did not launch on Xbox Game Pass. Under Activision's policy of adding new Call of Duty games the holiday after launch, it is expected on Game Pass in Holiday 2027.