Modern Warfare 3 announcement looming?

While perusing through my news reader I came across an interesting tidbit about a domain that had been registered by a privacy protected party, early last week. All that currently appears on the site, http://findmakarov.com is a small amount of dialogue that mentions “Soap”, and a daunting countdown (in a Modern Warfare style) that appears to coincide with the 2011 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC).  As far as the naming of the site, Makarov was the name of the protege of Call of Duty 4’s villian, Imran Zakhaev, and the main antagonist from Modern Warfare 2.

If you recall, Activision developer Infinity Ward released their first teaser trailer for Modern Warfare 2 at the 2009 GDC. The way the Call of Duty franchise development schedule has worked thus far, has been annual releases by two alternating development studios Treyarch (makers of Call of Duty 3, World at War, and Black Ops) and Infinity Ward (makers of Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare, and Modern Warfare 2).  Last year, there had been a lot of shake up at the Infinity Ward studio, with the heads of it’s studio being fired by publisher Activision.  However, at this time it appears that both Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty/Modern Warfare intellectual properties are both currently still owned by Activision. Infinity Ward also currently has a quality assurance tester position available on it’s jobs listings, which means they’re at least working on something.

With last year’s release of Call of Duty: Black Ops by Treyarch, the timing appears to be right for an Infinity Ward sequel to the heavy selling Modern Warfare installments.