Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is also deploying to last-gen consoles

Add the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III to the list of cross-generation games for this current generation. According to a recent IGN report, the upcoming shooter from Sledgehammer Games will release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One alongside its current-gen releases for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.

The Xbox Store page for Modern Warfare III confirms its release on both systems. Meanwhile, a video for the game on PlayStation's YouTube has "PS5 & PS4 Games" as part of its title. 

Historically, Call of Duty has been a largely cross-generational franchise. What entries that have been for a specific generation are fairly recent; the 2019 reboot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 were both released for PS4 and Xbox One. 

From 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and onwards, each entry has come out for past and current systems. On the Xbox Store and PlayStation Network, console versions for some of these recent titles (such as Black Ops Cold War and last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II) have been packaged as a $70 cross-gen bundle.

The industry still has time to support last-gen

Being cross-gen has had its perks for the Call of Duty, particularly PlayStation. Modern Warfare II was 2022's most-downloaded game for both PS5 and PS4, and since 2019, the series has accrued 43 million unique users on PlayStation systems.

This news comes also not long after EA revealed that Respawn Entertainment's 2023 game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor would come to PS4 and Xbox One. The aim is to help boost the sales for both that specific game and the larger Star Wars Jedi franchise.

While Sony and Microsoft are content with focusing their first-party attention on their current consoles, third-party studios still dipping into last-gen is an interesting paradox. It may speak to how unfortunately timed the PS5 and Xbox Series systems were with the pandemic and general economic instability. 

And it may also just be a sign that the PS4 and Xbox One may have been written off a little too soon as premature systems. Since current-gen consoles haven't really had long-term price drops, no one can be blamed for keeping hold of their older systems, especially when several titles are still being made for them.