Publishing giant Activision Blizzard has said that releasing a new Call of Duty game each year is a "critical" part of the company's strategy moving forward.

During the firm's financial call for the quarter ending June 30th, 2019, Goldman Sachs' Michael Ng asked what the future of Call of Duty looked like in an industry that is becoming increasingly more service-based rather than being centred on regular releases. Activision president Robert Kostich - promoted to the position in January - said that having annual launches was in fact a vital part of the company's strategy.

"We're taking some important steps to grow the franchise overall, and there's probably a few things I mentioned here," the exec said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

"Now obviously Call of Duty Mobile, it's going to be an ongoing live services title. We're building a huge stream of content and events, keep our players around the globe having fun for the long haul on this one. But if I look overall on the console and PC side, we do still see new launches as a critical part of our future.

"These new releases are, have been and continue to be a huge engagement-drivers for our community because they bring a robust set of new experiences to our fan. So that said, obviously, we want to also build player engagement here over time as well. We're very committed on this front. You're going to start seeing that in a few ways, first with Modern Warfare."

For the last quarter, Activision's monthly active users dipped slightly, but the publishing giant claims that engagement and player figures for Call of Duty were in fact up year-on-year.