Microsoft is bribing people to pre-order Modern Warfare 4 on Xbox instead of PS5

If you’ve pre-ordered the new Call Of Duty through the Xbox or Microsoft store, you’re eligible to receive a gift card a month after launch.

After last year’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 flopped hard enough for Activision to publicly apologise for it, there is undoubtedly a lot of pressure to ensure this year’s follow-up, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, regains player trust in the franchise.

Unfortunately for Activision, there’s very little it can meaningfully address in just a year and Modern Warfare 4’s beta has done little to raise excitement, especially given the poor reception to the story campaign teaser.

So, it’s perhaps not surprising to see Microsoft offer a new incentive on Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders, although the option they’ve gone for is pretty bizarre – especially as its only for Xbox.

If you pre-order any edition of the game on Xbox Series X/S or on PC via the Microsoft store, you will receive a digital Xbox gift card worth £4.

This is also in conjunction with a loyalty discount on Modern Warfare 4’s Vault Edition, which is 10% cheaper if you’ve purchased any Call Of Duty game since 2019.

The offer was quietly made over the weekend, on the Call Of Duty X account, to coincide with Modern Warfare 4’s open beta, which suggests Microsoft only came up with the idea recently – especially since it’s already set to expire tomorrow morning on September 2 at 4:59am.

However, according to Microsoft’s website, the offer applies to any pre-orders made since May 28, so if you’ve already pre-ordered Modern Warfare 4 through either the Xbox or Microsoft store, you’re eligible to receive the gift card.

You’ll receive a pop-up notification either on your Xbox console or via the Xbox app on PC to let you know when you’ve received the gift card, within 35 days after Modern Warfare 4’s launch on October 23. So, late November is the absolute latest it’ll arrive.

While this is Microsoft taking full advantage of its ownership of Activision, it also reads as Microsoft trying to discourage people from pre-ordering the game on PlayStation 5 and bumping up Xbox pre-order numbers.

Considering the company’s returned to embracing console exclusives again, maybe it’s kicking itself a bit for agreeing to keep Call Of Duty multiplatform.

Even after the buyout, Call Of Duty remains most popular on PlayStation 5, simply by virtue of there being more PlayStation consoles in the world than the Xbox Series X. Also, Microsoft’s ploy to raise Xbox player numbers by bringing new Call Of Duty games to Xbox Game Pass at launch backfired so badly that it’s since sworn not to do it again.

It’s not just Call Of Duty that’s taken a hit popularity-wise, though. Microsoft has been running out of good will for years, thanks in part to regular layoffs. Just this summer, a further 3,200 employees have been affected, with Doom developer id Software reportedly gutted in a manner that can only be described as vandalism.

Just recently, id Software producer Andrew Willis told Insider Gaming how he and his team went through a ‘brutal’ crunch period to get Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations out the door and despite it being a fantastic DLC expansion, most of the team was rewarded by being let go.

‘We had people that worked in Hollywood for 20 years and game development for 10 and said that this was the worst crunch they’d been a part of,’ said Willis.

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