At a recent Activision Blizzard analyst day presentation, the company talked at length about the future of its cherished game franchises, including James Bond, Guitar Hero, and Call of Duty, spilling the beans on the upcoming installments in the aforementioned franchises.

First of all, Activision Blizzard disclosed that it’s planning to turn its James Bond series, the first game of which, Quantum of Solace, has yet to release, into another cash cow, with a new James Bond game scheduled to release every year from here onwards. Although, Activision Blizzard’s first Bond game, Quantum of Solace, will come out alongside the feature film later this year, the future installments won’t necessarily follow this movie tie-in path and will release annually regardless of whether or not there’s a new Bond movie coming out. If nothing else, this shows that the company has high expectations of Quantum of Solace. With that said, let’s just hope this won’t turn out like Eidos’ Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

Next, the corporate eyes turned to the critically and commercially acclaimed Guitar Hero series. Should you be one of the many people who find the current number of Guitar Hero games on the market overabundant, think again, as Activision Blizzard plans to double the number of Guitar Hero SKUs next year, and triple them by 2010. Two of these new additions to the series are Guitar Hero: Metallica, which still hasn’t been officially announced, and reportedly DJ Hero from the newly acquired developer Freestyle Games. Guitar Hero: Hendrix, a Jimi Hendrix-centric Guitar Hero game, is also in the plans, if comments by the legendary guitarist Slash are anything to go by:

“Well, having the Aerosmith guys do it was very cool ’cause Aerosmith’s one of the bands I was heavily influenced by. And Metallica’s doing it, that’s great. Those are two ones that I think gives it some credibility. And they’re doing a Hendrix one, which is great.”

Lastly, the company also spent some time talking about Call of Duty 6. It confirmed it’s indeed being worked on by the maker of Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward. The sad bit is that the game is not expected to come out until sometime in 2010, which means there will be no new Call of Duty iteration next year. Activision Blizzard intends to fill in the gap with loads of downloadable content for the upcoming Treyarch-developed Call of Duty: World at War.

Comment away on the future of Activison Blizzard’s popular franchises below.

Source: The Cut Scene