You may have noticed that the phrase Call of Duty never appeared in the teaser trailer for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's sequel. That was no accident.

Activision officially announced Modern Warfare 2 today and as with the trailer, there was no Call of Duty prefix on the game's title in the press release. Guess they figured the COD4: MW was popular enough (and different enough from the World War 2 roots of the series) to deserve its own brand. It's also possible that Infinity Ward and Treyarch got tired of sharing a brand. Still, the Call of Duty name has so much heft that it seems like a weird move. The game will still sell shit-tons but it could sell shit-tons+1 if they kept COD in the title.

Modern Warfare 2 will be released worldwide on November 10th, 2009. They didn't mention platforms yet but the game should at least appear on the usual shooter trio of PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.