Update - Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling has been in touch with us to clarify his comments in this article regarding a new Call of Duty engine.

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling has said that building a new engine for the Call of Duty franchise "would be counter productive".

When it was put to him on Twitter that "someone just needs to spend the $ and construct a new engine for the CoD franchise... Ground up," Bowling replied: "That would be counter productive. An engine takes years and years to develop and get right."

His comments were made at the same time the internet started going Battlefield 3 crazy over the COD rival's first gameplay trailer, which showed off DICE's impressive Frostbite 2 engine, described by EA as "incredible technology that takes animation, destruction, lighting, scale and audio to new heights".

All of the Call of Duty games since 2005's CoD2 have run on the Infinity Ward engine, which has been modified for each iteration of the series, and it sounds like it's going to be no different when the next CoD title releases.

Bowling was also asked over the last day whether he still works for Activision, and if he's going to join his former bosses at new studio Respawn.

He replied: "I work at Infinity Ward and plan to remain here. We've got a great team and working on a great project."

Infinity Ward is rumoured to be co-developing a new Modern Warfare game for release this year with fellow Activision studios Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software.

Last month, the UK Official PlayStation Magazine lent credence to speculation that Modern Warfare 3 will be a prequel starring fan favourite character Ghost.

As for Battlefield 3, we saw the title in action at GDC this morning and our PC Gamer colleagues labelled it "the best looking PC game in the world right now".

Posted: Mar 03, 2011 1:24 am

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/291588/modern-warfare-3-new-engine-would-be-counter-productive-infinity-ward/