Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will integrate with Warzone in December

Call of Duty: Warzone will merge with the upcoming Black Ops Cold War in December.

Activision has confirmed some high-level details about the expected convergence of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and the free-to-play battle royale mode Warzone. This integration won't occur at launch, as initially expected.

As part of the publisher's earnings call for Q3 FY2020, CEO Bobby Kotick said that this will instead take place in December, with the launch of the game's first season.

Black Ops Cold War will follow the seasonal structure introduced in Modern Warfare, in that every season will last a couple of months and launch alongside a new Battle Pass. The Battle Pass itself remains unchanged; offering free access to functional weapons, and a many tiers of cosmetic items.

When the first season begins in December, players will be able to use their unlocked Black Ops Cold War weapons and operators in Warzone, similar to how it worked between Modern Warfare and Warzone. Activision also confirmed that each game's arsenal will be recognised under a different set of loadouts, but both will be available.

In other words, while you'll still be able to bring the currently available weapons into Warzone (Grau, Bruen etc.), you seemingly won't be able to mix them with Black Ops Cold War perks and weapons. To use those, you'll need to pull from a different page that only includes weapons introduced in the new game.

As expect, progression will continue to be unified across all modes, so multiplayer unlocks will work in Warzone (after the merge), as well as Zombies. There are still so many unanswered questions about the details of this move, but Kotick said developers will be making everything clear in the next couple of weeks.

Black Ops Cold War is out November 13 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.