Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4* has been been officially unveiled by Microsoft, with Infinity Ward taking the reins for a new franchise entry for Switch 2, PS5, Series X/S and PC, set in a future conflict between North and South Korea. The game is split between a campaign mode featuring Captain Price and new character Private Park, the DMZ multiplayer extraction shooter mode (now with dynamic weather), and traditional multiplayer.

Thankfully, an Activision representative confirmed to us that the campaign is a single-player only experience, following the widely-panned "built for co-op" campaign in Black Ops 7.

Apologies for the delay - confirming that campaign mode is single player only.

Notably, this is the first time in series history that Call of Duty has been announced for a Switch console, despite Microsoft's 2023 pledge to bring COD to Nintendo's hybrid console "day and date", with Black Ops 7 launching only on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Previously, the last entry to launch simultaneously on Nintendo hardware was Ghosts in 2013 (!). The Switch 2 version is being handled in-house, with help from developers Digital Legends who handled Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.

It's also worth noting that MW4 is also the first mainline entry to skip PS4 and Xbox One in favour of current-gen consoles. Press materials promise "a new technical benchmark for the series", with "greater scale, fidelity, density, responsiveness and immersion". The PC version also promises "more ways to tune performance, visual fidelity, responsiveness and customisation", with satellite studio Beenox leading efforts there as they have done for Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7.

Where's your hype meter at for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4?

Interestingly, MW4 does away with the bloom accuracy system used by essentially every FPS title on the market. Instead of bullets landing in a random position within a circle of a set size, bullets land deterministically based on where the gun is pointing. To do this, Infinity Ward rebuilt their animation system, such that the visible recoil of the gun is properly simulated and tied directly to the direction of bullets fired from it at a given moment. As a long-time Counter-Strike player, it's interesting to consider whether that will make it possible for esports players to better counteract recoil through mouse or stick movement, and how noticeable the new ballistics system will be overall.

Other multiplayer changes include more physics-based interactables like fire hydrants, CS2-style volumetric smoke, more grounded movement, a "Gunny" system that looks to suggest weapon customisation and loadout changes, multiple Prestige paths and "Apex" attachments. As well as 12 core 6v6 maps, plus dedicated small or large maps for different modes, there's also a "dynamic battleground" called Kill Block that uses different slices of multiplayer maps to keep gameplay fresh, with more than 500 combinations possible. The concept that reminds me of a procedurally-generated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map from modder Orelstealth covered by 3kliksphillip back in 2021.

Modern Warfare 4 is set to debut on October 23rd, so we're around five months from launch. While Infinity Ward is taking point on the game, 10 additional studios are also name-checked in the announcement, including the likes of Raven, Sledgehammer and Treyarch. Finally, the game won't be coming to Game Pass, as Microsoft rethinks its approach to the games subscription service.

Thus far, consider me intrigued - but, as always, we'll have to wait until we go hands-on to get a better sense of how Infinity Ward is pushing tech forward on its first ninth-generation console exclusive, and indeed how the game turns out on the relatively less powerful Switch 2 hardware.

*Also known as Modern Warfare 사. Don't confuse Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (the 23rd COD game) with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (the fourth COD game).