Key Takeaways
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is rumored to be released in late 2024, continuing the successful sub-series after the solid performance of Cold War in 2020.
- Despite the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is expected to be available on multiple platforms, including PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, and potentially Nintendo Switch.
- The gameplay of Black Ops 6 is likely to feature bombastic first-person shooting, vehicular combat, and a similar look and feel to Modern Warfare 2, with potential twists to add contrast to the game’s handling.
Modern Warfare 3 is here, and while it might be getting a middling reception it’s nonetheless topping the charts – but now that its blend of multiplayer, campaign and zombies is here, it’s time to start looking forward again.
2024 will bring another Call of Duty, like clockwork, and there’s already quite a lot of smoke about what sub-series it’s likely to come from. We’re expecting the next Black Ops game, so find out more about all the rumours right here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 rumoured release date
2022’s Modern Warfare 2 was intended as a bit of a reboot for Call of Duty, moving the series over to a unified engine and stabilising it moving forward.
Part of that effort was seemingly going to be a two-year period of support for the game, something that players really welcomed the idea of. We now know that hasn’t come about, of course – instead we’ve got Modern Warfare 3, which is as slim a game as COD has offered in quite a long time.
It also means that we’ve had two Modern Warfare games in a row – something that is completely unusual, making it a safe bet that we don’t get a third consecutive one.
The most widely-reported intel on that front is that we can expect another Black Ops game, after the solid success of Cold War in 2020.
Therefore, taking all that to be true, Black Ops 6 (whatever it ends up being titled) won’t arrive until late 2024, and will indeed use the same game engine as Modern Warfare 3 and 2, and Warzone.
This unity stands in contrast to recent times, where Modern Warfare 2019, Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard all used different iterations of the engine that led to difficulty in merging their content into the behemoth that is Warzone.
What platforms will Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 come out on?
In the old days it was the simplest task in the world to work out what platforms the next Call of Duty would appear on – all of them. Now, though, things are much more complicated. The elephant in the room is the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
This deal means that Xbox actually owns Call of Duty outright, with the potential to make it the world’s biggest exclusive console franchise, although it has vehemently denied any plans to do so.
It’s been made clear that we will get at least 10 years of cross-platform availability for COD, so we’re safe for a good while yet, and the game should come out on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC.
It may also be aiming for the Nintendo Switch, since Microsoft and Nintendo agreed to bring Call of Duty to the latter’s platforms moving forward, a major change for the series.
It’s possible, if not likely, that this might involve newer hardware given the Switch first came out in 2017, but we don’t have any firm information on that front.
What will Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s story be?
The Black Ops series started as an off-shoot to COD’s modern games, and from the very beginning played a bit more fast and loose with history, jumping into documented events and spinning them into a vast web of conspiracies and false flag operations.
Right now we don’t have any concrete details about the likely continuation of the series’ story from Activision itself, but a leak in July 2022 made for some interesting revelations.
Files found in the closed alpha test files of Warzone Mobile and posted to Twitter (before being swiftly struck down for copyright infringement) apparently showed a couple of images from Black Ops 6.
One had a key detail to offer up – a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber parked in a hangar, which makes the game highly likely to involve some action from the Gulf War, given the aircraft’s prominent use in that conflict.
This doesn’t guarantee anything, but it would make sense for the series to keep moving forward in time after the action in Cold War, and we’ll be interested to see how it remixes history this time out.
Will Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 have different gameplay
We can be a little more confident about how Black Ops 6 will eventually play – it’s a Call of Duty, after all.
That means you can definitely expect bombastic first-person shooting, and a decent amount of vehicular combat too given the evidence of recent games in the series.
Black Ops has often presented a slightly more arcadey look and feel compared to the grittier reality of Modern Warfare games, with more neon-soaked lighting and a slightly lighter tone, but that’s never guaranteed.
Since the game will be on the same engine as Modern Warfare 2 it should look great, and should be a closer match to that game in terms of movements and gunplay.
You can assume you’ll be able to dolphin dive and slide, therefore, but we’re not yet sure of whether Treyarch will put a deliberate spin on how the game handles, to get some contrast.
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