When the first teaser trailer for Modern Warfare 2 was released a few months back, one of the things people noticed was how the name changed. The first-person shooter didn’t include the Call of Duty title, and was oddly just called Modern Warfare 2. Because of that, most figured that Activision dropped the COD name, and decided to just use Modern Warfare.

MTV spoke with Infinity Ward’s community manager Robert Bowling, about why they chose to minus Call of Duty from the official name.

“This is a direct sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That is what we are trying to get across to our audience. It’s not just another one in the Call of Duty franchise. This has never happened in Call of Duty before. They’re typically their own campaigns and totally unrelated to the previous one. This one, is indeed a direct sequel and we just want to make that clear.”

Now this is pure speculation on my part, but I believe Activision were the ones to change the title. I’m guessing the Call of Duty franchise name will still live on, but will only be used when Treyarch (COD3, World at War) develops their version, which looks to happen every other year. This would be a way for Activision to distinguish to the consumer that Infinity Ward & Treyarch’s titles are two separate games.

If this ends up happening, it’s kinda funny (and sad) to see Infinity Ward loose the rights to a name which they started, way back in 2003.