Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 Price: Is It Worth Buying?

Our call: the Standard Edition is worth it for the campaign and DMZ. The extra $30 for Vault buys mostly skins, blueprints and one battle pass, and the reviews split hard on core multiplayer.

Every edition and what it costs

Checked October 30, 2026: Steam appdetails (US), PlayStation Store, Xbox Store and Nintendo's US news page. Upgrade price from Activision's editions page, which lists Vault "on all platforms".

The Vault bundle is the Hostile Alliance Operator Pack (Price, Valeria, Ghost and Blix skins), the Special Forces Operator Pack (operators from the UK, Germany, France and South Korea with voice packs in their own language), five signature weapon blueprints, one season of the BlackCell battle pass and a DMZ Deployment Bonus. BlackCell carries 1,100 COD Points and 20 tier skips, and its pass track has over 100 rewards, base weapons and XP tokens among them. It unlocks at the start of Season 1, which begins November 6; buy or upgrade after that and it waits for the next new season.

Outside the BlackCell pass, the only part that touches play is the DMZ bonus: one extra Active Duty slot and a kit with two weapon insurance contracts, two operator rescue beacons, two Fulton drop markers, two medium backpacks and two 2-plate carriers. Everything else in the bundle is skins and blueprints. If you would buy BlackCell anyway, the $30 upgrade makes sense. If not, you are paying $30 mostly for skins and blueprints. Physical copies on PS5 and Xbox Series X cannot be upgraded at all, so pick your edition before you buy a disc.

DMZ itself comes with every edition. Radio Times calls it a PvPvE extraction shooter "like Arc Raiders or Marathon", so if you already play ARC Raiders, DMZ is the mode to judge the purchase on.

PS4, Game Pass and online subscriptions

Activision said at the May reveal that Modern Warfare 4 "will not be available on PlayStation 4 or XBOX One", and it shipped that way. On PC you can buy it on Steam, Battle.net or the Xbox app. An Xbox Store purchase is Xbox Play Anywhere, so one copy covers your Series X|S and Xbox on PC; a Steam or Battle.net copy does not carry over to a console.

Game Pass is the bigger change. Activision's October 15 post says the game "will not be included with Game Pass until Holiday 2027". Ultimate subscribers keep Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare III in the meantime.

Console players pay a subscription on top of the $69.99. Activision's editions page says online modes need PlayStation Plus, Game Pass Essential or Nintendo Switch Online, and Nintendo's own launch post says the Switch Online membership is "needed for Multiplayer and DMZ".

The Steam version's hoops

Screenshot: Steam store page (Activision)

The Steam page asks for three things before the game runs. A mobile phone number has to be linked to your Steam account. TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot must be on, and Activision's TPM support page says players without them "will be restricted from playing any online game mode" in Modern Warfare 4. And you need 115 GB free on an SSD.

The minimum spec is modest for 2026: Windows 10 64-bit, a Ryzen 5 1400 or Core i5-6600, 8 GB of RAM and a GTX 970/1060, RX 470 or Arc A580. On October 30, Steam rated it Mostly Positive, with 74% of 5,286 English reviews positive.

Where reviewers and players disagree

TechRadar (October 23, more than 25 hours on PC) calls it "the best campaign in a decade" and praises "fantastic multiplayer"; its only listed complaint is that multiplayer lacks coherent factions. Windows Central, the same day, says it "might just be the best CoD ever" and singles out Kill Block, a map that rebuilds itself from modular sections, next to 12 standard 6v6 launch maps.

Radio Times (October 26, played on Steam, 4 out of 5) agrees on the campaign and DMZ but calls multiplayer "the only letdown this year". It lists a "wildly inconsistent" time to kill, maps that are "too small", poor spawns and the removal of Scorestreaks, and tells multiplayer-only players to go back to Black Ops 6 or Modern Warfare III. TechRadar sees the maps the other way, calling them "some of the best that we've had in recent years", though it also says they are "on the smaller side" outside Ground War: Combat Outpost, which it says "plays almost like a Battlefield match". If that is what you want, Battlefield 6's Season 4 is the comparison.

Players on r/CallOfDuty split the same way on launch day. "Lots of hit markers and insta deaths. Maps are meh," wrote The_Blur_77 on October 23, while StillGalaxy99 said "DMZ is definitely better than it was in MWII".

Screenshot: Steam store page (Activision)

The campaign is 16 missions. Insider Gaming, which scored the campaign 9, finished it in "just under six hours" on the easiest difficulty; Vice estimates six to eight hours, and AllThingsHow eight to nine on a standard first run. Most of that spread is Stranded, a semi-open mission with three objectives in any order plus loot crates and keypad puzzles. "Modern Warfare 4's campaign is good but I wouldn't pay full price only for the campaign," one player replied on October 23 to someone who mostly plays single player.

Is Modern Warfare 4 worth $69.99?

Yes, if you will play the campaign and DMZ. That pairing is where TechRadar, Windows Central and Radio Times all agree, and DMZ gives the six to nine hours of story a long tail. If you only want the campaign, $69.99 for 16 missions is steep: wait for a sale or for Game Pass in Holiday 2027. If you only play core multiplayer, the map and time-to-kill complaints are specific and repeated, so read the Season 1 patch notes on November 6 before you pay. On Switch 2, budget for Nintendo Switch Online on top, since the two online modes need it. And unless you would buy BlackCell anyway, leave the Vault Edition alone.

For another extraction shooter launch we covered, see the Active Matter launch.

References

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Steam, Steam
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Editions, Activision Support
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Releases on October 23, 2026, Call of Duty
4. Modern Warfare 4 Launches October 23 as a Standalone Release, Call of Duty
5. TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot for Call of Duty, Activision Support
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is out now for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo
7. Modern Warfare 4 Season 1: Everything you need to know, PlayStation Blog
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 review, TechRadar
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 review, Windows Central
10. CoD MW4 review: Poor multiplayer dampens a strong conclusion, Radio Times
11. Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Review, Insider Gaming
12. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Length Explained, Vice
13. COD Modern Warfare 4 Campaign: How Long to Beat It, AllThingsHow