There has been a lot of speculation of late as to what would be the next game in the annual Call of Duty release cycle. Publisher Activision has confirmed that the next title is going to be Call of Duty Black Ops 4. The official tag for the games appears to the Roman Numeral challenged moniker Black Ops IIII according to the game’s title announcement graphic. This adds an extra column to the well known Black Ops III logo.
Activision was pretty light on details when confirming that developer Treyarch is working on Black Ops 4. More information is expected for a planned announcement event on May 17, 2018. This will be done at a “Community Reveal Event”. The global launch for the game will be October 12, 2018. The October launch date is earlier than the traditional November launch window Call of Duty games have occupied for over a decade. Speculation is that the launch date may have been moved up to contend with the planned October 26, 2018 release of Red Dead Redemption 2.
It has been confirmed that Black Ops 4 will be landing on PS4, Xbox One and PC. There is no word as of yet as to whether or not it will appear on Switch. The series was first launched in 2010 and interesting enough that game was on Nintendo’s console at the time the Nintendo Wii. The Black Ops franchise covers the story of CIA operatives and their place in past, historically based military events. The first game saw Cuba’s Fidel Castro appearing in the campaign. Black Ops 2 had the operatives involved in the 1980s American invasion of Panama and the Afghan Mujahideen’s asymmetric resistance against their Soviet occupiers of the same time period. Black Ops 3 took the storyline’s setting to the future and the year 2065. It was the first Black Ops title to support four-player multiplayer for the campaign.
