Next Call of Duty drops PS4 and Xbox One support after 12 years

Activision has finally cut Call of Duty loose from PS4 and Xbox One, ending a support pattern that stretched across 12 years and two console generations. The company pushed back on a rumor that the next game would still land on older hardware and said plainly, “The next Call of Duty is not being developed for PS4.”

That break matters because Call of Duty had become one of the industry’s most durable cross-gen anchors. PlayStation 4 launched in North America on November 15, 2013, and Xbox One followed on November 22, 2013 in its initial launch markets. PS5 and Xbox Series X|S arrived in November 2020, which means the franchise kept serving last-gen players for roughly six years after current-gen systems hit store shelves. In a market where annual shooters often redraw their technical limits every few years, that is an unusually long overlap.

For players who stayed on PS4, the practical consequence is immediate: the series’ newest multiplayer experience will no longer be built for their machines. That leaves an enormous audience at a crossroads, especially since millions of PS4 consoles are still out in the wild and Call of Duty has historically relied on that scale to keep lobbies full, queues moving, and the ecosystem humming.

The timing is also awkward for anyone eyeing an upgrade. PS5 and Xbox Series X|S cost more now than they did at launch, and PC parts have not exactly gotten cheaper. Still, the move gives the franchise room to shed last-gen compromises that have long been seen as a drag on its technical ambitions, from visual fidelity to map complexity to how far the team can push performance across big multiplayer modes.

There is also a Nintendo-sized asterisk hanging over the shift. In February 2023, Microsoft said it had signed a binding 10-year legal agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms with full feature and content parity. Even so, whether the next game reaches Nintendo’s Switch 2 remains unresolved. Microsoft and Activision have repeatedly leaned on that kind of platform availability in regulatory arguments, insisting the series should remain broadly accessible.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 still shipped on PS4 and Xbox One, which makes this a cleaner line in the sand than the series has drawn in years. After more than a decade of straddling old and new hardware, one of gaming’s safest blockbusters has at last chosen a side.