Infinity Ward revealed that they had to fight tooth and nail to make a Modern Warfare game. As far back as Call of Duty 2, the developer wanted to move the series out of World War 2, but Activision was completely against the move. Yeah, that worked out well. Vince Zampella, the head of Infinity Ward, dropped some knowledge on the Official PlayStation Magazine:

With Call of Duty 2, we were dead set against it being World War 2, but Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we’d get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game. We always wanted to be on consoles and Activision saw us as more of a PC developer. And something I’ll add to that, Activision also did not want Modern Warfare. They thought working on a modern game was risky and [thought], ‘oh my god you can’t do that, it’s crazy!’ They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time.

It’s a good thing Infinity Ward kept pushing and convinced Activision to let them develop the game in a Modern Warfare setting. While CoD5 was good, it was disappointing going back to World War II after seeing how cool it is to fight in modern times. It’s also sad at how much Activision is willing to adapt and take even the slightest of risks. Bobby Kotick seems to want to empty your wallet and push you the same product over and over. Hopefully that philosophy changes, but I have my doubts.