Activision aren't idiots, they know the formula and will stick to it. Most people wont care, it just means the menu will load without the infinity ward title.

Luckily for Activision, the majority of people have absolutely no idea who Infinity Ward are and so will not be influenced by these events.
I disagree with Hickey, as I doubt Acti will kill off Infinity Ward, and they'll probably re-name the smaller studios Infinity Ward North, or Infinity Ward East, so that those who do actually recognise the name will be tricked into thinking that there is any actual relation.

Honestly I hope this series dies.

MW2 was a piece of crap in my opinion so I can fully live without Infinity Ward's childish controversy courting level design and madcap take on multiplayer.

Maybe the splinter group will return to the quality control present in CoD4 and we get something new and interesting.

Modern Warfare 3 is going to be significantly different, and by that I mean everyone will buy it, notice how bad it is, and game over for the CoD franchise.

Whilst this all intially rests at the two heads of IW, Activision withdrawing their bonuses until they make another one of them is exceptionally bad practice.

"Oh you made us a multi million dollar game, you can have a bonus for that...after you complete another game."

I hope this rips apart publisher/developer relations all over, because at times...developers get way to greedy.

The clearest precedent we have for this is when Sports Interactive split from Eidos and left their Championship Manager brand behind. Most fans of that series followed the developer and SI's Football Manager is now the bigger game.

Now, of course the market for a big budget shooter is very different to a footy management sim, and maybe the SI fans were more aware of the developer's pedigree and how that relates to the final product, but I don't think it's entirely right to ignore the influences that the hardcore gamers can collectively wield and how that permeates down to the mass market.

I'd expect Respawn Entertainment's game to attract a lot of buzz, just as there will be some scepticism over the likely quality of a Modern Warfare 3. Both games will still do well, but I don't think either will hit MW2's heights.

If the lawsuit from the ex-employees suceeeds then Activision won't be able to use the MW name or engine.

In which case, I think it's sunk.

I bought MW2 on release and was disappointed. The single player game was poor compared the first game - the idea seemed to be that throwing a ridiculous amount of bad guys at you made for an entertaining game, rather than producing something that took real skill. The 2-player offline mode was reasonable, though not great, and the online multiplayer was fine but suffered from being paired with too many amazingly highly-skilled players. Plus the majority of the levels were a bit too small to do anything skillful - there was too much charge in and hope for the best (particularly when you're not that good and everyone else seems to be brilliant).

I took a chance on BFBC2, not having played the previous incarnations but having found 1943 to be a very good value download. I'd initially thought of it as a MW rip-off. How wrong I was. While the single player game isn't amazing, a little too plodding and formulaic, the online multiplayer is brilliant. The skill matching seems to work pretty well so I always feel I have something to offer the game, the types of player you can be offer genuine choice, the selection of weapons and vehicles are good, the destruction works well, the game choice is excellent. All in all, a superb multiplayer game.

I don't see myself bothering with MW3, be it Infinity Ward or anyone else. BFBC3, however, is a must-have, and, having swayed a few people to join me on that already, I hope to pull even more in when the 3rd incarnation eventually hits...

These things go full circle. The Medal of Honour team jumped ship and Call of Duty became the name to beat, now its all gone back to EA so maybe the Medal of Honour series will regain some glory.
Not to say the general public are idiots but when they see videos depicting the shooting of bad guys in a variety of locales, they'll buy it no matter which name is on the box and who is developing it.
I will do my usual trick of rent it, complete the single player, test the multiplayer and only buy it if it lives up to expectations.

CoD4 > CoD2 > CoD:MW2 > CoD:WaW > CoD3

That's my order of preference of the CoD titles I played from release (didn't play CoD1 until recently).

It is noticeable that I place 3 Infinity Ward titles infront of those from Treyarch but WaW & MW2 are pretty interchangeable based upon the flaws in multiplayer. The flaws vary from overpowered killstreaks to imbalances with perks to the subjective matter of a 'glassy' feel to the controls.

CoD4 stands out from all of them because from day one it just worked. With the exception of a few physics glitches - under the map etc - there were very few issues with the multiplayer aspect of the game while the single player offered a coherent campaign that was definitely not seen in MW2. In terms of multiplayer I think of CoD4 being CoD:Source as it hones everything down to the maximum you need; MW2 just adds unnecessary fripperies.

Also, there were noise clips to indicate whether or not shots had hit an opponent and their absence - or their absence to a similar level - is noticeable in WaW and MW2.

In view of all that, and that Treyarch took the CoD4 engine and produced a less polished (graphically and gameplay wise) game than IW, I would tend to stick with whatever IW produced and view other developer products less favourably before playing them.

However, with the move to a new studio I would like to see what former IW staffers would do.

A beta of any game would also help!