Infinity Ward’s boss has said getting this year’s Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 4, running on Nintendo Switch 2 has been “pretty smooth”.
Announced on Thursday, Modern Warfare 4 will be the first Call of Duty game to release for Nintendo Switch 2, or any Nintendo platform for more than a decade.
Alongside its new standalone extraction mode, DMZ, the announcement of a Switch 2 version has turned heads. Confirming recent rumors, for the first time since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts on Wii U, Call of Duty will be playable on a Nintendo console, with Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2 launching day-and-date with the other versions.
Speaking to me ahead of Modern Warfare 4’s announcement, Infinity Ward studio head Jack O’Hara relayed his excitement about the franchise finally returning to Nintendo.
“It’s exciting to be back on a Nintendo platform,” smiles O’ Hara, “It’s always fun to come out on a new platform – especially a portable platform… but for us, Nintendo is super exciting.”
It turns out, O’Hara, Call of Duty, and Nintendo go back a long way: “I’ve worked [on] the Wii U versions of some of the Call of Duty games, all the way back to Nintendo DS -working with n-Space on Call of Duty 4 – so it’s exciting to be back on a Nintendo platform.”
While Microsoft’s antitrust court case revealed in 2023 that the military shooter would eventually arrive on Nintendo platforms, today’s announcement provides final confirmation.
Performance-wise, O’Hara tells me he has come away impressed with the Switch 2, suggesting that its performance is favorable compared to the other current-gen versions.
“To be honest, it’s been pretty seamless,” O’Hara says, of getting Modern Warfare 4 running on Switch 2, “We got the hardware, then we got the game up and running pretty quickly, and now it’s just about optimization and performance…”
He went on to suggest that there will be cross-platform multiplayer on Switch 2. “In our play test, people play it against the other platforms, and it’s super fun,” he said, “It’s actually been pretty smooth. There are no problems to report.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches globally on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on Friday, October 23.
Set in modern-day South Korea, this year’s campaign story looks set to court controversy, with a newly appointed fictional supreme leader of North Korea invading and plunging the peninsula into a deadly conflict. As a Korean journalist told The Guardian, this narrative depicting all-out war across Korea may prove divisive in the region.
