Warzone Shutting Down on PS4 and Xbox One This Year

Activision has confirmed that Call of Duty: Warzone will stop working on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year, with the free-to-play battle royale dropping last-gen support once Modern Warfare 4 arrives on October 23. The game leaves both digital storefronts on June 4, the first step in a phased shutdown that ends with Warzone becoming unplayable on the older hardware.

The cutoff reads like routine housekeeping for a pair of 13-year-old machines. Sitting underneath it is a bigger consequence: 2026 is the year the industry’s biggest games walk away from a last-gen base of more than 175 million consoles, and they are doing it just as the price of moving to current-gen hardware has climbed to record highs.

The Shutdown Timeline Players Need to Know

Activision is not flipping a single switch. The retirement of Warzone on last-gen consoles runs in three stages across the back half of the year, and each one removes a different layer of access.

1. June 4: Warzone is pulled from the PS4 and Xbox One digital stores, so new players can no longer download it on either console.
2. June 25: the in-game store is removed on both platforms. From this date you cannot buy COD Points (Call of Duty Points, the game’s premium currency) or any new content.
3. Warzone Season 1, later this year: when the first season tied to Modern Warfare 4 goes live, Warzone stops being playable on the PS4 and Xbox One entirely.

Progress is not stranded for players who switch hardware. Activision says player progression and anything bought with COD Points will carry over to a supported platform through a linked Activision account, so a move to a PS5, an Xbox Series X/S or PC keeps your unlocks intact. The catch is that you have to make that move, and you have to own the newer machine to do it.

Why Activision Is Drawing the Line at Modern Warfare 4

The trigger is the new game itself. Modern Warfare 4 was revealed on May 28 with a cinematic trailer that opens on North Korea launching a missile strike on South Korea, and it ships for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. Notably absent from that list: the PS4 and Xbox One.

Warzone is being rebuilt on Modern Warfare 4 as its technical foundation, the same way the mode has always shared an engine and asset base with the year’s premium release. Once that foundation moves to current-gen-only code, the older consoles have nothing left to run. So the platform list for the paid game effectively becomes the platform list for the free one.

The Switch 2 addition is its own milestone. Infinity Ward, working with mobile specialist Digital Legends, is building Call of Duty’s return to Nintendo Switch 2 natively, with cross-play, cross-progression and optional Joy-Con mouse controls. It marks the franchise’s first appearance on Nintendo hardware in roughly 13 years, which makes the irony hard to miss: Call of Duty is showing up on a brand-new Nintendo console the same season it abandons two older ones.

The 175-Million-Console Base Getting Left Behind

The size of the audience being cut off is what makes this more than a footnote. The PS4 and Xbox One were not niche boxes. They were two of the best-selling consoles ever made, and a meaningful slice of their owners never upgraded.

What complicates the easy “just upgrade” reply is that last-gen has not gone quiet. According to the long-running console sales totals tracked by VGChartz, the PS4 and Xbox One together moved more units over the past year than the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S combined, a sign that plenty of households are still buying and using the older machines well into the current generation.

• 117.2 million PS4 units sold lifetime, Sony’s last public count before it stopped reporting the figure.
• 58.5 million Xbox One units, less than half the PS4 total.
• 6.76 million more last-gen consoles sold than current-gen ones in the trailing 12 months.

The Upgrade Bill Lands Amid Record Console Prices

Telling those players to buy a PS5 or an Xbox Series machine is a lot more expensive in 2026 than it would have been a year ago. The timing is brutal, and it is the part of this story that the dry shutdown notice glosses over.

Sony’s Second Hike in Under a Year

Sony raised PS5 prices by around $50 in the United States in August 2025, then went further with a PS5 price revision effective in April 2026 that lifted recommended retail prices by roughly $100 across many regions, with more territories added on May 1. Microsoft also pushed up the Xbox Series S and X twice inside the same window. Both makers are charging more for current-gen hardware deep into the generation, the opposite of the usual mid-life discounting curve.

The Memory-Price Squeeze

The reason is partly out of either company’s hands. Console makers point to US tariffs and a sharp run-up in component costs, with DRAM (dynamic random-access memory, the working memory inside every console) contract prices reported to have risen well over 170% year over year. Higher prices have bitten into demand, too: Xbox Series sales have run sharply lower year over year and PS5 sales have softened, suggesting buyers have hit a ceiling on what they will pay.

So the message to a Warzone player on a PS4 is awkward. Keep playing your other games on the console you own, or pay a record price to chase a free game onto hardware that is itself getting more expensive, not less.

Warzone Joins the 2026 Cross-Gen Cliff

This is where the second-order story comes into focus. Warzone is not making this jump alone. It is one of several flagship releases drawing the same line in the same calendar year, and together they mark the moment the long cross-gen era ends for the games that move the most hardware.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is confirmed for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S only, with no PS4 or Xbox One version, per Rockstar’s current-gen-only platform plans for GTA 6. Add Modern Warfare 4 and the Warzone shutdown, and the three biggest console franchises of the moment all close the door on last-gen within months of each other. The bridge that let players delay an upgrade for years is being pulled up.

Next-generation hardware is already on the horizon, with a PS6 and Microsoft’s rumored ‘Project Helix’ both expected to surface at some point next year, which only sharpens the choice. If you upgrade now to keep Warzone, you do it at peak prices a year before newer boxes arrive. If you wait, you sit out the games. The 175 million owners of last-gen consoles will spend the back half of 2026 deciding which of those costs they would rather eat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still play Call of Duty: Warzone on PS4 and Xbox One right now?

Yes, for now. Warzone remains playable on the PS4 and Xbox One until Modern Warfare 4’s Season 1 launches later this year. After that season goes live, the game will no longer run on either last-gen console.

What happens to my COD Points and progress?

They carry over. Activision says player progression and content bought with COD Points will transfer to a supported platform as long as your console account is linked to an Activision account. You will need to move to a PS5, an Xbox Series X/S or PC to keep using them.

When can I no longer buy Warzone content on last-gen?

From June 25. Warzone disappears from the PS4 and Xbox One digital stores on June 4, and the in-game store is removed on June 25, after which you cannot purchase COD Points or new content on those consoles.

Does Modern Warfare 4 come to PS4 or Xbox One?

No. Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2 only. The lack of a last-gen version is the direct reason Warzone is dropping support for the older machines.

Is Warzone being shut down on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles too?

No. The shutdown applies only to the PS4 and Xbox One. Warzone continues on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, where it will run on the Modern Warfare 4 foundation.