This year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be released on October 28th but players will have the opportunity to join Captain Price and the gang on their latest adventure a whole week early. However, there’s a catch or two to bear in mind.
Players who pre-order Modern Warfare 2 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, or Xbox One will get early access to the game’s single-player campaign mode, starting on October 20th. This offer is only available to console players, so if you prefer to play on PC, you’ll have to wait until October 28th to see what Captain Price and the gang are up against.
The big catch is that you need to pre-order the digital edition of the game to get early access to Modern Warfare 2’s campaign mode. Unfortunately, a disc version will not cut it, but it makes sense as you’ll get the full game with the multiplayer modes being locked off until the full release.
It’s been a long time since a Call of Duty game sold itself on the merits of its campaign, but Infinity Ward seems to be really pushing the single-player experience this year with the promise of a top-tier, action-packed adventure.
In a blog post cross-published on the PlayStation Blog and the Xbox New Wire, Activision’s Daniel Noel states that Modern Warfare 2 will offer players a greater graphical experience with increased fidelity thanks to photogrammetry, improved lighting and shadows, and even improved audio thanks to some tweaks to the game engine.
Pre-ordering Modern Warfare 2 will get you early access to the Campaign mode, but that’s not all. Your pre-order will also grant early access to the Open Beta, with the first weekend being PlayStation-only.
The first Open Beta weekend will run on PS5 and PS5 from Friday, September 16th until Tuesday, September 20th. However, from Friday to Sunday, only pre-order players will have access. Everybody else can join in from Sunday, September 18th through to Tuesday, September 20th. And, as has become the norm now, a PS Plus subscription isn’t required to go online and play against others in the beta.
For Xbox players, the Open Beta will run a little differently. The beta will still have an early access period for those who pre-order, but it will run from Thursday, September 22nd until Saturday, September 26th. An Xbox Live Gold sub is needed to play online with the beta.
Then, from Saturday, September 26th through to Monday, September 26th, the beta will be open to all players, even those who haven’t pre-ordered. That’s the “open” part of the beta, then.
It’s also worth noting that from September 22nd through to September 26th, PlayStation players will be granted a second round of access to the beta, and again, this is for all players, not just those who pre-order, and it serves as the opportunity to test out the crossplay capabilities of the game’s multiplayer suite.
Before any of these betas actually get underway, there will be plenty more information and reveals on September 15th as Activision hosts Call of Duty: Next, a live stream event where developers will dive deep into Modern Warfare 2 and its multiplayer reveal. There’s also the mobile edition of Call of Duty: Warzone which will get some airtime, along with a few “surprises,” whatever they may be.
