• A new listing for unannounced Activision shooter The Red Door has surfaced on the Microsoft Store.
• The Red Door is presumed to be an Alpha build of the next Call of Duty title, rumored to be called Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
• The listing reveals a significantly smaller approximate size of 81.65 GB compared to Modern Warfare’s 200 GB.

A listing for an unannounced shooter from Activision called The Red Door has surfaced on the Microsoft Store , potentially referencing this year’s entry in the long-running Call of Duty franchise.

A similar listing appeared on the PlayStation Network last month  bearing the tag ‘COD2020INTALPHA1’, implying an Alpha build of what rumors suggest will be titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War .

Codename: The ‘Red Door’

The Microsoft Store listing offers a few more details, namely that the game is available on Xbox One and features a Mature 17+ rating with ‘Intense Violence, Blood, Language.’ The listing also contains a screenshot consisting of a keyhole draped in red light that leads to what appears to be a maze of some sort.

A short cryptic description accompanies the image. It reads:

There is more than one truth. If you go looking for answers, be ready to question everything and accept that nothing will ever be the same. The Red Door awaits, do you dare step through it?

More reassuringly for fans exhausted by the hard drive space sapping 200 GB install size of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, The Red Door tallies up to a comparatively manageable 81.65 GB. This might be the first sign that Activision is paring down on the obnoxiously large downloads.

As for the name, The Red Door, fans suspect it references lyrics from the song ‘Paint It Black’ by The Rolling Stones ;

I see a red door, and I want it painted black.

Activision used the same song in the 2015 reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops III. This ties into rumors the next Call of Duty game is a soft reboot of the Black Ops tranche of Activision’s CoD portfolio. The Red Door is presumably an internal code-name for the project.

Unusually for the Call of Duty franchise, there’s been no word of an official reveal. In any typical year, we’d be wading through a glut of Call of Duty promotional material by now. Similar to other publishers and developers, Activision’s plans have likely been torpedoed by the ongoing pandemic.