Modern Warfare 4 Reportedly Tested on 13-Year-Old PS4

Thirteen years. The PlayStation 4 launched in November 2013, back when the Xbox One was bundled with Kinect and Battlefield 4 was the hot new shooter. If a new report is accurate, Activision is still building Call of Duty games for it.

According to leaker Alaix on X, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is currently being playtested on PS4. Alaix has a track record with Call of Duty leaks, having previously revealed Vanguard map pools and Black Ops skin collaborations before they were announced. His post, dated May 3, was blunt: "Hearing that MW4 is currently being playtested on PS4 xddd." The "xddd" tells you even the leaker finds this absurd.

Playtesting doesn't guarantee a release, obviously. Activision could run internal tests on PS4 and decide the hardware simply can't handle it. But given that every single Call of Duty since the PS5 launched has still shipped on last-gen, the pattern here is pretty clear. Black Ops 6, Black Ops 7, and every annual entry before them all made it to PS4 and Xbox One. Activision has shown zero willingness to leave those install bases behind, and I don't think this year will be different.

The Cost of Holding On

Here's what frustrates me about this: the rebooted Modern Warfare series has been the visual and technical showcase for Call of Duty. Modern Warfare (2019) was a leap for the franchise. Modern Warfare 2 pushed the IW engine further. If Modern Warfare 4 has to run on hardware from 2013, those ambitions get capped for everyone, not just the people playing on old consoles. Level geometry gets simpler. AI gets dumber. Player counts stay conservative. Map design has to account for a machine with 8GB of shared RAM and a mobile-class GPU by today's standards.

CD Projekt Red figured this out with Cyberpunk 2077. The 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty expansion simply dropped PS4 support entirely because the hardware couldn't keep up with where the game needed to go. It was the right call, even if it meant cutting off a chunk of the player base. Activision, sitting on the most commercially dominant FPS franchise on the planet, apparently isn't willing to make that same decision.

The financial logic isn't hard to follow. Leaked GTA Online player data reportedly showed nearly 2 million average players still on PS4, a number that dwarfs Xbox Series X/S and PC. If those numbers hold even roughly true for Call of Duty, walking away from PS4 means walking away from millions of potential sales in regions where current-gen adoption is still slow. Activision is a business, and I get that. But at some point you have to ask what it's costing the game itself.

A late-2025 leak suggested Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer would be a "complete copy" of Modern Warfare 2's gameplay, with few notable upgrades. If that's true, and the game is also targeting PS4, the picture starts to look less like a new entry and more like a roster update with a fresh campaign bolted on. One leaked detail that does sound promising is the return of DMZ with new purpose-built maps, but even that mode would benefit from hardware that isn't old enough to be in secondary school.

Modern Warfare 4 is rumoured for an October 2026 launch, and at one point was reportedly being considered as a launch title for Microsoft's next Xbox console, Project Helix. If it had shipped on PS4 and a next-gen Xbox simultaneously, it would have been the first Call of Duty to span three console generations. Activision and Infinity Ward haven't officially confirmed the game's title, platforms, or release date. Based on Black Ops 7's reception, which landed a 65 average on OpenCritic with only 35% of critics recommending it, the franchise could use a step forward rather than another year of treading water on decade-old hardware.