Modern Warfare 4 is out today, and Call of Duty is back on Nintendo

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is out today, Friday October 23, and it closes the rebooted Modern Warfare story that Infinity Ward restarted in 2019. The full game, campaign, multiplayer and the returning DMZ extraction mode, is live now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC through Steam, Battle.net and Xbox on PC, with a native Nintendo Switch 2 version launching the same day. There is no PlayStation 4 or Xbox One version. It is the first mainline Call of Duty built only for current generation hardware, and the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts reached the Wii U in 2013.

The campaign splits its sixteen missions between two wars that turn out to be one. Private Park Hyun Jun, a young South Korean soldier in combat for the first time, fights through a full scale North Korean invasion of the South, from collapsing cities to counteroffensives, with missions that also reach New York, Paris and Mumbai. Running a few days ahead of him, Captain Price works as what Activision calls an operator turned outlaw, hunting through Makarov's network toward the Archer, a Russian defence minister played by Mads Mikkelsen. Early verdicts have been kind to the story: IGN's campaign review called it the best Modern Warfare campaign since the 2019 reboot, and GameSpot ranked it among the strongest the series has produced in years. Multiplayer opens with twelve core six versus six maps and thirty-three launch weapons, and DMZ returns as the third mode, set in the Hajin exclusion zone.

Two decisions around the launch matter more than any single mission. The first is the Nintendo return. The Switch 2 version, built natively with Barcelona studio Digital Legends, is the visible payoff of the ten year deal Microsoft promised Nintendo while regulators weighed its Activision purchase: same day launch, same modes, cross play with the other platforms. Thirteen years is a long exile for the biggest shooter series in the world, and it ends not with a cut down port but with the full game. The second decision cuts the other way. Modern Warfare 4 is not on Xbox Game Pass at launch. Activision confirmed on October 15 that the game is a standalone purchase, priced at $69.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 for the Vault Edition, and that it will not join Game Pass until holiday 2027, a break from the day one launches of the recent Black Ops games that follows Microsoft's wider retreat from day one Call of Duty on the service.

Our call is that the Switch 2 version, not the campaign, is the launch that history will grade. The campaign praise is real but familiar, and a well reviewed story mode has not saved a Call of Duty year before when the live game wobbled. The Nintendo version is a genuine experiment: a current generation blockbuster shooter, sold at full price, on a handheld, to an audience that has not been offered one in thirteen years. If it holds its players past the opening weeks, every major publisher's platform maths changes, and the ten year deal stops looking like a regulatory concession and starts looking like the smartest distribution move of the generation. If it fades by Christmas, the lesson will be just as clear, and just as hard for the industry to argue with.