Coincidentally, on the eve of Activision's Call of Duty XP live event, IGN spoke with ex-Infinity Ward leads Vince Zampella and Jason West about their new studio, Respawn Entertainment, and the next best thing to major game reveals: Employee numbers. "55 full-time employees," Zampella revealed, "and then we have some contractors [...] 4 or 5 people right now that are contracting."

"That's boring," you protest. "What about the guns?" you demand. We know, we want to know all about the guns in Respawn's game as well, but for now we've got to divine as much as we can from the crystal ball of employee headcount. "We'll get bigger, but we're slowing growing," Zampella rhymed. "The trick there is it's always just time versus size of the team. So you can take longer and have fewer people or you can get bigger and do some things faster," West added.

If you'll allow us to read between the lines here, it should be clear: Respawn is following the Nice & Smooth school of hiring, meaning its new IP won't be coming out anytime soon if they hire slow ... or it will, if they hire quick. "So if things have to take a little longer they could take a little longer," West suggested, "and if we're fortunate enough to find more awesome talent then we'll do that." So Q4 2012 then? 2013 maybe? We give up.