Call of Duty players 'aren't hardcore', says Infinity Ward

Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward isn't too worried about splitting its audience by releasing new title Ghosts across both old and new consoles, because many of its players only ever play COD and are unlikely to change their habits any time soon.

"Regardless of platform - people's gaming habits aren't going to change just because there's a new platform," executive producer Mark Rubin has told OXM. "We have an enormous amount of players who are more in the casual game space, but they play a lot.

"It's kind of a weird, ironic thing to say; they aren't hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we'll take next gen and see how far we can go with it."

It's the nature of this larger mainstream audience that Rubin says prompted the studio to include playable female characters in multiplayer. "Our fan base is huge," he told Kotaku. "We cover such a dramatic range of people who play our game that we wanted to be as inclusive as we possibly could with character customisation. And that's where the idea came from. Why wouldn't we have a female [option] then?"

Call of Duty: Ghosts launches on November 5th for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Wii U as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4, letting the discs sit there and taunt you until their console launches on November 22nd and November 29th respectively.