Call of Duty: Strike Team is "not some sort of lazy port"

The new mobile Call of Duty game wasn't rushed out; it was developed under conditions of strict secrecy, which is why its appearance on the scene seems so sudden.

"It’s not some sort of lazy port, you know - ‘here’s some stuff we found lying around and we made a mobile game of it,’" lead designer John Dennis told Kotaku.

"This has been a very hard-working team working for a long time to try and deliver a quality experience."

Strike Team has, in fact, been in the works for a year, but Activision managed to keep it under wraps. Developer The Blast Furnace is led by Mark Washbrook, a former member of Rockstar London, and he and his fellow Rockstar veterans know how to keep things quiet.

“Quite a lot of the guys in the studio worked at Rockstar, and in that environment everything you work on is top secret. There’s an absolute code of combat that you do not speak about your title outside of the office," he said.

"The thing of value to us is that this is a thing you pour all of your time, your love and your and energy into, and you don’t want to see that go out prematurely.”

Activision struggles to keep a lid on the Call of Duty franchise, with the next title usually turning up months in advance, but after the great Modern Warfare 3 leak of 2011 the publisher cracked down on leaks, and has managed to avoid substantial spoilers since then.