Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2: what's been measured, what hasn't, and why the port matters more than the game

The basics

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 came out Friday, October 23, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2, at $69.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the Vault edition. (Nintendo, Activision) Pre-order buyers had the campaign from October 16 and DMZ from October 20. There is no PlayStation 4 or Xbox One version, which makes it the first modern Call of Duty to skip the old consoles entirely, and there's no version for the original Switch. The Switch 2 port is by Digital Legends, a studio in Barcelona.

Three practical details for Switch 2 buyers. The download is about 85 GB, with a 39 GB update reported on top, on a console that ships with 256 GB. (Nintendo Everything) The physical edition is a Game-Key Card, so the box holds a key and the game still downloads. And it is not on Game Pass. Activision's own pre-order guide says so, and secondary coverage of an Activision post puts the Game Pass date at holiday 2027. Black Ops 7 stays in Game Pass in the meantime. (Pure Xbox)

What's been measured on Switch 2

Here is everything I could find that's a measurement rather than a promise. Nintendo Life played the campaign on Switch 2 and reported what "seems to be a locked 30fps target" with no major drops, two anti-aliasing options, Digital Legends' own SMAA T2X and Nvidia DLSS, and the usual handheld compromises: flat hair, pixelated fire, texture pop-in, and a big quality drop in the pre-rendered cutscenes. No resolution numbers. (Nintendo Life) Digital Foundry's Tom Morgan has only commented on stills so far: DLSS and SMAA appear to start from the same internal resolution, DLSS gives cleaner edges, and whether DLSS costs frames is unconfirmed. (Wccftech) Multiplayer targets 60 frames per second, and beta footage ran close to that with dips. (Pocket Tactics)

So the honest sentence is: 30 in the campaign looks solid, 60 in multiplayer is the target, and the final-build analysis is still coming. The briefing I was sent said testing "confirms a locked 60fps." It doesn't. Nobody has published that yet. If a steady 60 is the reason you'd buy this version, wait a few more days. If you want Call of Duty on a train, the campaign evidence is already good enough.

The reviews, for the game itself

Metacritic has it at 86 overall, 89 on PS5 from 13 reviews and 86 on PC from 25, with Xbox and Switch 2 still unscored on only a few reviews each. OpenCritic sits at 85 with 97 percent of critics recommending it. (Metacritic, OpenCritic) Nintendo Life gave the Switch 2 version a 9, GameSpot gave the game a 7. Several outlets note it's the best-reviewed Call of Duty since the 2011 Modern Warfare 3. For a series people had written off as yearly maintenance, that's a real result.

What Capcom actually said

The briefing's biggest claim was that optimizing for Switch 2 is "curing the unoptimized PC port epidemic," with Capcom backporting RE Engine fixes to PC and PS5. I chased that down. The article it came from is based on a YouTube video, not a Capcom interview, and its frame-rate comparison has no source.

What Capcom has said on the record is narrower. Monster Hunter Wilds comes to Switch 2 on December 4, 2026, with cross-play and every update included, and the Ascendance expansion follows on Switch 2 in 2027. That part is confirmed by Capcom's investor relations release. (Capcom) Producer Genki Sunano told Kotaku the port was "painstaking, and at times seemingly endless," that the target is a stable 30 in handheld even in four-player hunts, and that lessons from it will go into performance work on existing platforms before Ascendance. (Kotaku) He called it a "virtuous circle" to TheGamer. (TheGamer)

That's a developer saying the handheld work might help the PC version later. It's plausible, and as someone who ships the same app to a Fold8 and an iPhone Air, I believe that building for the weaker device makes you honest. But it isn't a measured improvement on PC or PS5 today, and I'm not going to pretend it is.

September's hardware numbers

VGChartz's September estimates have the PS5 at about 1.11 million units worldwide and the Switch 2 at about 803,000, with the original Switch at 170,000 and the Xbox Series at 128,000. The PS5 led the Americas, Europe and Asia; the Switch 2 led Oceania. Lifetime, the PS5 is at 96.1 million and the Switch 2 at 24.2 million after about 16 months. For 2026 so far, though, the Switch 2 is ahead, 8.59 million to 6.59 million. (VGChartz) These are estimates, not company figures, and Sony and Nintendo both report next month. One month of PS5 ahead doesn't undo the year.

The upscaler gap: FSR 4.1 and QSSR

Two bits of console plumbing from this month, both real. On October 20, AMD said its FSR 4.1 AI upscaler is coming to the Xbox Series X and S, the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, Radeon RX 6000 cards and some Ryzen chips. Xbox's chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet appeared in the video. The handhelds got a preview driver on October 23 and the RX 6000 support shipped the same day it was announced, but the Series X and S date is "coming soon" with nothing firmer. (heise, Pure Xbox)

QSSR, if the acronym threw you, is Quick Spectral Super Resolution, the AI upscaler Sony announced on October 1 for the base PS5. It's a lighter cousin of the PS5 Pro's PSSR, built with AMD, using FP16 math because the base PS5 lacks the INT8 support the Pro has. First games are Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei via patches, and Digital Foundry measured 1.5 to 1.8 milliseconds to take Wolverine from 864p to 1440p. (Tom's Hardware) So PS5 owners have AI upscaling in shipping games today and Xbox owners have an announcement. That's the gap, and it's accurate.

What I got sent, and what was wrong with it

• No test "confirms a locked 60fps" on Switch 2. It's the multiplayer target, and the full analysis isn't out.
• Capcom hasn't backported anything measurable. A producer said lessons will carry over. That's it.
• The Capcom story traces to a YouTube video, not an interview, and its frame-rate numbers are unsourced.
• Missing from the briefing: no Game Pass until late 2027, an 85 GB install, and a Game-Key Card in the box.

Where I land

I'm still on an original Switch, and I said last week that a 2D RPG wasn't going to change that. A Call of Duty that runs at a locked 30 in the campaign on a handheld is a stronger argument than I expected, and if the 60 in multiplayer holds up when someone finally measures it, this port becomes the best case for the hardware that isn't a Nintendo game. I'm not buying yet. But for the first time I've started pricing the Switch 2 instead of just reading about it. Ask me again after Digital Foundry publishes.

Verified October 25, 2026. Platforms, prices and dates from Nintendo, Activision and Pure Xbox; the holiday 2027 Game Pass date is from secondary coverage of an Activision post I couldn't open directly. Switch 2 performance from Nintendo Life, Wccftech and Pocket Tactics. Scores from Metacritic and OpenCritic as of Sunday. Capcom from its investor release and Kotaku. Hardware estimates from VGChartz. Upscalers from heise and Tom's Hardware.