We all know Call of Duty‘s setup: one year we get the highly anticipated Infinity Ward title, and the next we get the Treyarch one, which never goes down quite as well. Call of Duty: Black Ops is seemingly bucking the trend this year though, with amazing sales and high praise from critics and gamers alike. Apparently we’re wrong to think of Treyarch as the lesser of the two developers too, or at least Activison CEO Bobby Kotick says so.

When a Joystiq interview refereed to the developer as the b-team of the franchise, Kotick was quick to shoot it down. “That’s an unfair view of Treyarch. You know it’s not really an objective view,” he said.

“Treyarch contributed so significantly to the multiplayer technology that’s in Modern Warfare 2 and they didn’t really get the credit for that.” Treyarch also keep their hands busy around the clock with other projects like Wii-ports of CoD games; they’re certainly an efficient studio.

Kotick also commented on the current state of Infinity Ward: “There’s at least 60 or 70 super-talented, amazingly capable people who are there. They shouldn’t have to suffer for the bad actions of a couple of guys. They have a great culture, they’re really good independent thinkers – incredible technology base.”