Call of Duty: Warzone Seemingly Headed to Next-Gen Consoles

Infinity Ward has suggested that it will support Call of Duty: Warzone on both the Xbox Series X and PS5 after they launch later this year. A developer also hinted that the Battle Royale standalone could abandon the series' yearly release schedule. In an interview with GamerGen, Taylor Kurosaki of Infinity Ward responded to a question about the game being ported to next-generation consoles, noting that "as soon as those new systems are out and available, I'm sure we'll support them." This will be music to the ears of Warzone fans who are hoping to continue battling in the Gulag and beyond as we shift to next-generation consoles at the end of the year. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/23/call-of-duty-warzone-review"] In the same interview, Kurosaki mentioned that Warzone has helped Infinity Ward to rethink its approach to releasing content, suggesting that the battle royale will break away from the "regular cadence" of Call of Duty, a franchise in which new games have been launching every year for the best part of a decade. "Call of Duty is a genre in itself, there are different branches in the Call of Duty tree, but they're all connected in some ways," Kurosaki notes. "Warzone will be the through-line that connects all of the different various sub-franchises of Call of Duty." This suggests that Warzone isn't going away any time soon, and given its popularity may support future releases within the Call of Duty series as a whole. What this means for the future of the franchise is unclear right now, but it looks like Infinity Ward is at the very least thinking about different ways to service fans with Call of Duty content going forward, beyond the typical yearly launch cycle which has made the series a constant through previous generations. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-ign-call-of-duty-review&captions=true"] As we've seen with Warzone so far, it's been a useful playground for Infinity Ward to introduce characters across the Modern Warfare spectrum like Captain Price, Ghost and even Riley the dog, but this could extend to the other subdivisions of Call of Duty that we've seen in the past - perhaps even those developed by other studios like Treyarch. For more on Warzone, check out our article on the ingenious way in which Infinity Ward is punishing the game's cheaters. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.