Call of Duty continues to support last-gen consoles with Black Ops 6

While we would typically see last-gen consoles phased out entirely at this point in a new hardware generation, the PS4 and Xbox One still have a bit more life in them than anticipated. New mainline Call of Duty titles are still heading to previous-gen consoles, and that won't be changing with the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. 

Black Ops 6 is going to release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and of course, PC. Developer sources confirmed to Insider Gaming that a recently leaked marketing image showing the game's list of platforms, clarifying that the reason Xbox One does not appear on the image is due to the fact that the Xbox Series X/S version of the game will be sold as a cross-gen version, so you'll get access to the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game with one purchase. It appears that PlayStation gamers won't be getting the same deal.

Modern Warfare 3 also came to last-gen consoles and sold quite well on them. While we are four years into this current console generation, sales of the hardware have been slower than expected, in part due to supply issues over the course of 2020 and 2021. Apparently, a lot of PS4 and Xbox One owners are still playing on their old hardware. In fact, 48% of COD sales on PlayStation are specifically for the PS4 version of the games, which is a sizable market that Microsoft can't afford to drop, having just spent around $70 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard.

It would seem that this year's Call of Duty will not be coming to the Nintendo Switch. While Microsoft does plan to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles and has already stated it is confident it can get the game running on Switch hardware, Black Ops 6 had already been in development for several years by the time the acquisition closed. It is much more likely that Call of Duty 2025 will come to Nintendo's platform. At that time, Nintendo will more than likely have launched its next-gen Switch console.

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KitGuru Says: Sports games and annual franchises like Call of Duty have often continued to support last-gen consoles well into the cycle of a new generation. These games are often targeted at a mass market, so targeting older platforms with a sizable userbase still makes sense. 

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