2026’s Call of Duty is not coming to PS4

After some light rumours that this year’s Call of Duty is in testing on PlayStation 4, the Call of Duty social media team has issued a quick rebuttal to say that no, it’s not. this means that Call of Duty 2026 will not be launching of PS4 and (we have to assume) not for Xbox One either.

“Not sure where this one started,” they wrote, “but it’s not true. The next Call of Duty is not being developed for PS4.”

While the mainline Call of Duty game looks to be losing last gen support, there’s no indication in this statement about what might happen to free-to-play money-maker Call of Duty: Warzone. It’s possible that Warzone will remain on the current tech stack and stretch out support that little bit longer.

It’s impressive the longevity that the PS4 and Xbox One have had for Call of Duty, though not entirely surprising as part of a broader trend towards cross-gen support for the biggest and most lucrative games and franchises. The first Call of Duty for PS4 was Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013 (itself a cross-gen release back to the PS3 and Xbox 360), and carried on through to last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, some thirteen years later. While cross-gen support for PS3 and 360 lasted for three years until Black Ops 3 (less the campaign), a staggering six entries launched across both the PS5 and PS4 together. That’s almost an entire extra console generation.

So, pour one out for the old mainstay, but Activision has decided to move on from the last generation, hopefully freeing up the resources to make better and more efficient use of the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. It could be that this was long planned, but it might also be that the poor reception to last year’s Black Ops 7 saw the higher ups decide to chop off the older consoles to put more people on newer systems.

At the same time, the decision to ditch last gen can be seen to be going hand-in-hand with the decision to withdraw Call of Duty from launching day one with Game Pass in future. This two-year experiment might have spurred on Game Pass subscriptions to a certain extent, but would have likely come at the cost of lower outright sales on Xbox and PC. Losing out on PS4 sales as well might have been a bit too much for the bank balance to justify.

There’s also the persistent notion that Call of Duty might come back to a Nintendo platform for the first time since Ghosts, given how successful the Switch 2 has been in handling big budget games from other publishers. Former Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked up the possibility when trying to convince regulators that letting Microsoft buy Activision was a great idea.

Anyway… I know it’s tough out there, but basically, if you’re still on a PS4 and want to play Call of Duty this year, it’s time to try and upgrade.

Source: Call of Duty

Tags: Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Modern Warfare 4, PlayStation 4