Call of Duty 2025 may launch on PS4, Xbox One to squeeze out maximum revenue

Activision could launch this year's Call of Duty game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles to squeeze out another year's worth of spending from gen 8 gamers.

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Call of Duty 2025 is currently in development for last-gen consoles, sources tell Insider Gaming and Charlie Intel. The move is consistent with Microsoft's latest aggressive push into maximizing game sales, microtransactions, and services across as many platforms as possible--an ethos that has manifested in Xbox's current anti-exclusive business model.

Neither Activision nor Microsoft have confirmed the news, and sources appear to be unsure whether or not the game will actually launch on last-gen platforms. The current reports just say that COD '25 is in development for those systems.

Even still, such a move does fit with Microsoft's current plan of seeping its games, content, and where possible, services onto any and every device capable of playing games. The move even Activision's pre-merger business model of releasing annualized Call of Duty games like clockwork to specific platforms. Only this time, Activision may also have to launch COD 2025 on Switch 2 as per the 10-year agreements that it made during the FTC v Microsoft merger trial.

Whether or not the game launches on PS4 and Xbox One really depends on how populated those platforms still are. Trends indicate there's some cross-over between the PS4 and PS5 generations, but updated and exact metrics haven't been released. Way back in 2022, Sony revealed that 69% of PS Plus users were on PS4, and that PS4 made 65% of total PlayStation Store revenues for the Fiscal Year 2021 period. That was a while back.