The announcement of a new Call of Duty game is about as far from earth-shattering as news gets, but this one is more noteworthy than usual, because the latest mainline entry is coming to a Nintendo platform for the first time since 2013.
Activision has officially revealed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, a return to Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare sub-series after a three-year hiatus. As you’d expect, the game is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC. It will also launch on Switch 2 — the franchise’s debut on the console and the first evidence of the supposed 10-year Call of Duty pact that Microsoft and Nintendo made in 2023.
Infinity Ward is developing the native Switch 2 version of Modern Warfare 4 in partnership with the mobile gaming-focused studio Digital Legends. It’s also significant that the game won’t be coming to PS4 or Xbox One, making it the first current-gen-only CoD of this generation. Call of Duty Warzone will also be shut down on PS4 and Xbox One later this year.
The single-player campaign will drop you into the boots of Private Park, a young South Korean soldier getting his first taste of live combat as North Korea invades his homeland. Infinity Ward promises a typically globe-trotting campaign that also features military assignments in New York, Paris and Mumbai.
Series mainstay Captain Price also returns, now an outlaw. He’s on a personal revenge quest that sees him drawn toward “a weapon powerful enough to shift the balance of power, setting in motion a conflict far greater than he even anticipated.” Expect the usual cocktail of large-scale skirmishes, covert ops and cinematic set pieces.
Multiplayer will, as ever, be the big draw for many, and Infinity Ward is promising “a new weapon-first technology stack that unifies precision aiming, physical handling, realistic audio propagation, enhanced visibility, and smarter combat perception into the most authentic Modern Warfare gunplay yet.” Fluid movement is once again a big focus, and weapons will now respond more naturally to stance changes and the environment.
Modern Warfare 4 will launch with 12 core maps, with fan favorite modes like Search and Destroy and Domination returning alongside several new ones. Infinity Ward will share more information about these, as well as the also returning DMZ extraction shooter mode, in the coming weeks.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC (with a number of new PC-specific performance optimizations) and Switch 2. It won’t be a day one Game Pass inclusion this time around, following the recent Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass price drops.
