Game Engine

The Game Engine is what controls many aspects of the game such as physics and graphics.

id Tech 3 Engine

The id Tech 3 Engine by Id Software is the first engine used by the series. Both the IW Engine and Treyarch NGL are based on it.

• Call of Duty (2003)
• Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004)
• Call of Duty: Classic (2009)

IW Engine

Original

The IW Engine was developed by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 2 and was based on Id Tech 3. It's the game engine powering most of the Call of Duty series.

It is used by many games, including:

• Call of Duty 2 (2005) - IW 2.0
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) IW 3.0
• Call of Duty: World at War (2008) - IW 3.0 (Modified)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) - IW 4.0
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) - IW 3.0 (Heavily Modified)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) - MW3 engine (Modified IW 4.0, unofficially IW 5.0)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012) - Black Ops II engine (Heavily Modified IW 3.0)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) - IW 6.0 (Updated MW3 engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) - Black Ops III engine (heavily modified Black Ops II engine)
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016) - IW 7.0 (Modified IW 6.0 engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018) - Black Ops 4 engine (heavily modified Black Ops III engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) - Black Ops Cold War engine (modified Black Ops III engine with the tool of IW 8.0)

New engine

A completely rebuilt from scratch engine code named IW 8.0, was developed by Infinity Ward Poland and Infinity Ward LA with assistance from NVIDIA. Its development started five years before the first game running on the engine was released.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
• Call of Duty: Warzone (2020)

Sledgehammer Games Engine

Sledgehammer Games has built a custom in house-engine for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. An upgraded version was developed for Sledgehammer second game. It is also used by Raven Software and Beenox for the two remaster of older Call of Duty from the Modern Warfare series.

• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014) - Version 1
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (2016) - Version 1
• Call of Duty: WWII (2017) - Version 2
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered (2020) - Version 1

Treyarch NGL

Treyarch developed an in-house engine named Treyarch NGL based on the Id Tech 3. It has the particularity of having been used only for console games and it was only used in two Call of Duty games before it was replaced by IW 3.0 for Call of Duty: World at War.

• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (2005)
• Call of Duty 3 (2006)

Asura Engine

The Asura Engine is the engine used by Rebellion Developments for their version of Call of Duty: World at War.

• Call of Duty: World At War: Final Fronts (2008)

RenderWare

The RenderWare is a game engine developed by Criterion Games. It was choosed by Spark Unlimited for one Call of Duty game.

• Call of Duty: Finest Hour (2004)

Unity Engine

• Call of Duty: Heroes (2014)
• Call of Duty: Mobile (2019)