A string of hasty departures consisting primarily of longtime vets at Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward left company parent Activision with jobs to fill. Has the ongoing legal blunder turned talent away? Not at all.

Over an unspecified timeframe, Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl revealed in a conference call today that over 5,000 applicants have applied in hopes of landing a job at IW and Sledgehammer, two of the company’s Call of Duty-centric studios, the latter of which is working on a 2011 installment that strays away from familiar territory — that being the FPS genre.

We have received approximately 5k applications for positions at our Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward studios alone. Out of that incredible pool, we’ve chosen 60 extremely talented individuals to join our team. These additions have been important and we are very pleased with the game development we’ve seen from both studios today.

Further, Tippl noted he expects the company to vest even more resources into its Call of Duty staple of studios into next year, following the release of Black Ops in November. With momentum on-track to surpass the massive sales of Modern Warfare 2, Activision expects Black Ops to register as this year’s biggest calendar blockbuster.

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