Developer Treyarch insists that Call of Duty: World at War will capitalise on the success of last year’s Modern Warfare by being the best shooter on the market.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has racked up ten million unit sales in just seven months and has become one of the most popular Xbox Live games to date, and Activision hopes its historical follow-up can perform similar miracles at retail.

“Modern Warfare opened the door to so many people new to Call of Duty,” said senior producer Noah Heller.

“The game built great fertile ground for us to start on and if we’re going to say: ‘Look it’s Christmas, here’s another Call of Duty as you loved it last year’, then we need to make sure the game is high quality or people won’t trust what Call of Duty is. This has to be the best shooter and has to redefine the World War II genre.”

Richard Farrelly, creative lead at Treyarch, is certain the game won’t fail to disappoint as it builds on Call of Duty 4’s existing technology.

“Luckily we’ve started with the Call of Duty 4 engine, so we’ve already got this awesome technology. We’ve got a great team of guys, so everything’s in place for another hit.”

World at War is set to hit retail in time for Christmas on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii.