Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will cost $70 for next-gen console versions
Update: Current-gen versions will be playable via backward compatibility, but will be missing enhancements
Original story:
This year's Call of Duty game has been revealed to be the rumored Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which launches on November 13 on both generations of consoles -- though the price is a bit steeper for the new generation.
According to USGamer, the latest Call of Duty takes place as the title indicates, during the Cold War, and focuses on a number of "What if?"s and conspiracy theories from the time period -- with then-president Ronald Reagan as a central figure in the game's campaign.
However, it appears that rather than implement Smart Delivery on Xbox Series X, Activision has instead opted for a cross-generational bundle that costs $70 and gives access to the game on both Xbox generations, while the Xbox One-only version of the game costs $60.
The same situation exists on PS5, with a $60 PS4 edition, a $70 cross-generational version, and a $90 Ultimate Edition that includes cross-generation play as well as other perks.
This follows a trend kicked off by Take-Two when it announced earlier this year that NBA 2K21 would cost $70 on next-generation consoles, which CEO Strauss Zelnick said "reflected the quality of the experience".
However, Ubisoft said that it would not be increasing the prices on its next-generation games this holiday -- though it left room open for price hikes in the future.
Though early previews coming out today focused on the single-player campaign, one detail that came out was that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War won't just be launching on both generations of consoles -- it will also feature cross-generational multiplayer alongside the cross-platform play that's been present in recent versions of the game.
Update: It appears that cross-generational compatibility is not quite as simple as it initially appeared, according to the Activision support website.
Additional details there indicate that the PS4 version of the game will be upgradeable to the PS5 version via PSN, though the Xbox One version will not have this capability.
Furthermore, both games will be playable in their current-generation versions on the next-generation consoles via backwards compatibility regardless of whether users purchased the upgraded editions, but will be missing enhancements such as "higher framerate, hardware-based ray-tracing, faster load times, and more."