Call of Duty to Remain on Last-Gen Consoles Until at Least 2024 Per Leaked Documents

While it took some time to really get up to speed, this current generation of gaming has finally kicked off in earnest, with a lot of titles now opting to only release on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. That said, the bigger the series, the more reluctant publishers are to leave any players behind, so will Call of Duty make a clean break and fully embrace the current generation any time soon? Don’t count on it.

Earlier this week, some of Activision’s future Call of Duty plans were revealed via a data breach, and insider Tom Henderson has since had the opportunity to have a closer look at some of the documents. According to him, there are references to Call of Duty 2024, currently codenamed Cerberus, still coming out on last-gen consoles. Of course, if CoD 024 comes out on last-gen systems it’s very likely this year’s CoD will as well.

As usual, take this with a grain of salt for now – Henderson himself cautions that the information found in the Activision data breach is from December 2022, so it may have already changed. That said, all Call of Duty games now run on a single unified engine, one designed to work on last-gen platforms, so it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to continue making lower-spec versions. It should also be mentioned that Activision has signed a 10-year agreement to bring Call of Duty titles to the Nintendo platforms, so developing for less powerful hardware is something they’re locked into for a while.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the rumors, Call of Duty 2024 is said to be developed by Treyarch and will likely be a continuation of the Black Ops sub-series. Initially, it seemed like CoD would actually be skipping 2023, but it’s now believed a full traditional Call of Duty from developer Sledgehammer Games will be released this year.

Call of Duty is also at the heart of various hearings and lawsuits over Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. While regulators have expressed concerns that Microsoft will eventually seek to make Call of Duty exclusive, the company has promised to keep the series on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms, with full feature parity, for 10 years. Sony has not agreed to the deal.

What do you think? Do you think it’s a good move for Call of Duty to continue to support older hardware or is it time to move on?