Activision has officially confirmed that its next Call of Duty title will not be released on last-generation consoles, bringing an end to the franchise’s extended support for older hardware that has continued across several recent entries in the series. The announcement was made through the official Call of Duty account on X in direct response to rumors that had been circulating online, with the statement specifically naming the PlayStation 4 as a platform that the upcoming game is not being developed for. While the Xbox One was not explicitly mentioned in the statement, it is widely expected to be excluded as well given that the two platforms are generally treated as equivalent generations in terms of development decisions.
The move has been anticipated by the gaming community for some time. Recent entries in the Call of Duty series have demonstrated visible performance limitations when running on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hardware, with the consoles struggling to keep pace with the technical demands of modern game engines and large-scale multiplayer environments. The decision to drop last-generation support is expected to allow the development team at Activision to concentrate resources on delivering improved performance, higher graphical fidelity, and broader feature sets on current-generation platforms including the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, without being constrained by the technical ceiling of hardware that is now well over a decade old.
The upcoming title, widely anticipated to be Modern Warfare 4, faces a more complex commercial landscape than previous entries. Call of Duty games are no longer expected to be included in Xbox Game Pass following Microsoft’s recent changes to its subscription offering, a shift that could meaningfully affect how many players access the game at launch given how significantly Game Pass had expanded the franchise’s reach in recent years. The release window presents an additional challenge, as the game is set to launch during a period that may coincide with the arrival of Grand Theft Auto VI, currently scheduled for November 19, which is expected to be one of the most commercially dominant game releases in years. The combination of dropping Game Pass inclusion, losing access to a significant portion of the last-generation player base, and launching into the shadow of Grand Theft Auto VI means the next Call of Duty will need to deliver a compelling enough experience on its own merits to hold its position in an unusually competitive release window.
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