Unfortunate news for anyone still playing on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One- the next Call of Duty will not feature any support for last-gen consoles. With both consoles being almost 13 years old, it makes sense developers would want to move on and focus on making the most they can using current hardware, as they’ve been more limited previously trying to make games run on older tech. This would make this the first Call of Duty since Call of Duty: Ghosts to not appear on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and thus Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 the last to appear on both generations of consoles. It has been quite a while, with the time from the first Call of Duty release on last-gen consoles to now being longer than the time between the launch of the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One.
Call of Duty, after Activision was purchased by Microsoft, was being highlighted as a core reason to buy Xbox GamePass, with day one free downloads for Call of Duty games released on Xbox. However, this was scaled back after Xbox took on new leadership under current CEO Asha Sharma, who responded to consumer complaints regarding the increased price of GamePass by reducing the subscription prices while retracting the free day one downloads of Call of Duty games for GamePass users.
With this news, it’s worth pointing out that both Microsoft and Sony are making plans for their next generation of consoles. Much has been speculated about Microsoft’s “Project Helix”, the next big Xbox console, and Sony’s “PlayStation 6”, both set to release in either 2027 or 2028. Both promise cutting-edge features that aim to push the console race to its current limits, however many are also wondering what the possible price for these consoles may look like at a time where we’re already seeing game prices go up.