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Another year, another Call of Duty game - with Activision's Infinity Ward team at the helm for COD 2026. Whilst the game hasn't been formally revealed yet, we know that it's coming and that it's going to be another Modern Warfare game of some sort, and now an official post from the Call of Duty socials team confirms that the game won't be releasing on last-gen consoles.
Yep, for the first time since Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the series won't be launching on an eighth generation gaming console. The official tweet only mentions PS4 here (due to a recent rumour going around about the game coming to Sony's last-gen system), but it's pretty safe to assume that the title won't be launching for Xbox One either.
With Black Ops 7 being a cross-gen game last year, the series had a 13-game run on last-gen systems - with 2013's Call of Duty: Ghosts being the first to appear there. In a strange way, COD moving on from Xbox One finally feels like the current generation is properly underway, at a time where we're beginning to talk about next-gen with Project Helix. We just have EA Sports FC to move over now to make it feel like we've officially left Xbox One behind!
This is a pretty interesting development, then, especially with Xbox pulling COD 2026 out of Game Pass as well. There'll be a much smaller install base for Microsoft to target with this year's title, and they'll be hoping that Infinity Ward can deliver the goods and make this a top-seller too. However, they'll only have PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC players to sell to this time around.