A Brief History of Call of Duty on Nintendo Consoles

The Call of Duty franchise has been around for more than 20 years, but throughout its existence, it has had a rough relationship with Nintendo’s line of consoles.

Nintendo fans have typically not been associated with Call of Duty players. Whereas Nintendo consoles are seen as “toys” for kids or family-friendly entertainment devices, the Xbox and PlayStation are viewed as consoles for mature audiences. This is perhaps why CoD has released on these two platforms more consistently.

In recent years, the perceptions of these consoles have gradually started to change. Ever since Nintendo started to get more and more third-party support on its Switch 2 platform, players have started to associate the brand with the types of mature games on PlayStation and Xbox, as well. This support has been so strong, in fact, that Call of Duty is now making its way to Nintendo consoles later this year.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is Coming to Nintendo Switch 2

The next mainline CoD installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, is going to launch on Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the previously expected PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S releases of the game. The existence of this port can perhaps be attributed to the 10-year deal that CoD owner Microsoft signed with Nintendo, prior to its closure of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition in 2023. Regardless of the reason, though, this is exciting news for Nintendo fans.

With Modern Warfare 4 arriving on Switch 2 in the near future, now is probably the best time to take a look back at CoD’s history on Nintendo consoles.

Call of Duty Has Had Inconsistent Support on Nintendo’s Platform

Like many FPS franchises of its time, CoD started off as a PC-only series when it debuted in 2003. The very first installment in the CoD franchise that came to consoles was Call of Duty: Finest Hour, which released in late 2004 on Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. This was a CoD game designed specifically for home consoles, so it did not come to PC at the time.

Activision followed this game up a year later with Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, which itself was a spin-off of the PC-exclusive (at least at the time) Call of Duty 2. Like before, the Nintendo platform was treated the same as PlayStation and Xbox when it came to console releases. The title came out on Nintendo GameCube, alongside other sixth-generation platforms.

Call of Duty 3 was the first time in the series’ history when we started to see a delay with Nintendo releases of CoD installments. This particular title launched on PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 in November 2006, but it didn’t launch on Wii and PlayStation 3 until a few weeks later. The delay for this game on Nintendo’s platform wasn’t particularly long, but it’s still worth highlighting.

Many Call of Duty Titles Came to DS and Wii

When the series’ next installment, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, came out on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2007, a lot of Nintendo fans expected it to come to the Wii imminently, as well. That, however, didn’t happen. The game did make its way to Nintendo’s motion-controlled console eventually, but it took a whopping two years to hit the platform; it launched on November 2009, to be exact.

In addition to the port on Wii, Activision decided to release a completely separate game with the same exact name as CoD 4: Modern Warfare for Nintendo DS. Owing to the console’s hardware limitations, this title is more of an adaptation of the mainline game for handheld devices. This DS-exclusive title came out around the same time as the original CoD 4, unlike the Wii release.

With the exception of Modern Warfare 2, the next few installments in the CoD series released on Nintendo Wii at launch, alongside other platforms. These included 2008’s CoD: World at War, 2010’s CoD: Black Ops, and 2011’s CoD: Modern Warfare 3. A version of World at War, in particular, also came to Nintendo DS.

The Wii ports of these titles, it’s worth noting, were often different than their PlayStation and Xbox counterparts, as with many of the prior CoD releases. This can be attributed to the underpowered nature of Nintendo’s 7th-generation device. The Wii was about as powerful as a GameCube and, as such, Activision had to make some compromises to get CoD running on the system.

Call of Duty Abandoned Nintendo for More than a Decade

While CoD: Modern Warfare 2 never made its way to Wii, an adaptation of the game did come to Nintendo DS in 2009, under the title CoD: Modern Warfare: Mobilized. This DS installment was then followed up by the similarly DS-exclusive iterations of Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, the latter of which was given the subtitle ‘Defiance’ on the platform.

2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts were, up until recently, the last titles in the CoD franchise that came to Nintendo consoles. Rather than releasing on Wii or Nintendo DS, though, they instead launched on Nintendo’s ill-fated Wii U system. Both Wii U ports of the games released around the same time as on other platforms, but they seemingly sold so poorly that they scared Activision off from releasing CoD games on Nintendo consoles for more than a decade.

Activision didn’t launch a single CoD game on the wildly successful Nintendo Switch. But with the upcoming Modern Warfare 4, it seems the company has finally decided that it’s time to bring the series back where it belongs: into the hands of kids with Nintendo consoles who are way too young to play the games.