Speaking to the Official PlayStation Magazine (thanks CVG), chief Vince Zampella has said that publisher originally wanted the firm to make another themed Call of Duty, instead of Modern Warfare.

"With 2, we were dead set against it being World War 2. But Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we'd get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game. We always wanted to be on consoles and Activision saw us as more of a developer," Zampella told the magazine.

"And something I'll add to that, Activision also did not want Modern Warfare. They thought working on a modern game was risky and [thought], 'oh my god you can't do that, it's crazy!' They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time."

Sometimes the market research lies, it would seem.

By Luke Guttridge