It’s not a very big surprise, but it’s official: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be released by Activision this holiday season to impress gamers all over the world and “raise the bar for the shooter genre,” according to Activision’s CFO Thomas Tippl.

Speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual meeting Tippl said: “Last year we had probably beaten most expert expectations by growing the Call of Duty franchise over the tremendous success that was the first iteration of Modern Warfare. For 2009, Modern Warfare is coming back, we expect it will be the most anticipated game of the year. Perhaps the number one game of the year despite the fact that it’s only going to launch in the holiday season.”

Call of Duty is indeed a strong franchise and there is clearly a lot of hype surrounding the release of the second Modern Warfare, but it might be too soon. The economy is down, we’re already receiving top quality games and many people are still playing both COD 4 and COD: WaW. What do you say – is it too early for a new CoD game?