Category: XBOX Games ShowcaseJune 7, 2026DMZ – New Intel on Call of Duty’s Extraction Shooter ExperienceMike Nelson and Will Fulton, XBOX WireSummaryToday at XBOX Games Showcase, Activision and Infinity Ward revealed the first look at DMZ, the definitive Call of Duty extraction shooter experience.Deploy into a volatile living combat zone as an off-the-books asset tasked with recovering advanced military tech left in the wake of war.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and DMZ will be available October 23, 2026, for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, and cloud. Play it on both console and PC at no additional cost with XBOX Play Anywhere. Also available on Battle.net, Steam, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5. Modern Warfare 4 is available for pre-order on the XBOX Store and other digital retailers.Last week we got our first details on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s single-player campaign and robust multiplayer features, giving us a look at the ambitious MW4 that’s launching later this year on October 23, 2026. Today at XBOX Games Showcase, Activision and Infinity Ward upped the ante with the first look at DMZ, the definitive Call of Duty extraction shooter experience.DMZ has been transformed from its beta, building upon a foundation shaped by player feedback over the years, to deliver a deeper, more complete extraction shooter experience with new, dynamic systems to learn.Set across a large-scale conflict zone, shaped by the events of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4,it’s built both for structured missions and emergent gameplay, where you can loot, fight, negotiate, betray, and extract with whatever you can carry. You can deploy solo or with a squad into a volatile living combat zone as off-the-books assets tasked with recovering advanced military technology left in the wake of war.This living world will also feature harsh conditions in the exclusion zone that are always shifting, with changing weather, dynamic military objectives, and hostile forces moving throughout the zone – every deployment will be a new story inside this combat sandbox.To learn more about what’s in store for players when DMZ launches alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 later this year, we spoke to Studio Multiplayer Creative Director Joe Cecot and Lead Game Designer Jacky Reynolds about some of the biggest learnings from running the years-longbeta, how progression and rewards have evolved, and how they’re making sure DMZ feels accessible to new players while providing depth for dedicated fans..post-template-default .xwsrc-block-content-block .wp-block-column.flex-basis-50.push--25.column--content {flex: 100%;margin-left: 0;}What defines DMZ’s identity now, beyond simply being an extraction mode?Joe Cecot, Studio Multiplayer Creative Director – We like to think of DMZ as an action extraction shooter. When we made Call of Duty: Warzone, we looked at what’s happening in the genre of battle royales. We always talked about, let’s skate where the puck is going, not where the puck is. And so, Call of Duty: Warzone for us was the kind of action BR with the addition of parachutes and buybacks and gulags.For DMZ, we’ve been paying attention to the genre. We try and play every different extraction shooter that comes out, or even games that are slightly similar, just to see what’s clicking with players, what feels good, what doesn’t feel good. I think one of the things in the original DMZ that we wanted but we couldn’t get to was meaningful player growth.When you start out in an extraction shooter, you often start out small; you don’t have a lot of items. You don’t have a lot of features and then it’s like that hero’s journey – for most battle royales it’s over the course of one match. DMZ, or the extraction shooter’s hero’s journey, is often months long, and with ups and downs. And so that’s where I think DMZ differs so heavily from the beta: it strives to be a legitimate extraction shooter with persistent inventory, with a Forward Operating Base (FOB) that you’re upgrading, with stations that you can interact with and that help you build out your loadout, build your weapon. That’s how I would lay out the DMZ of today versus what we did in the beta.What have been some of the biggest learnings in having a beta for DMZ, and which ones would you apply to the development of future Call of Duty games?Cecot – We felt like with the DMZ beta, we got to try a bunch of stuff in live, which was really, really good. For learnings… there’s a lot of learnings. We added the Active Duty slots post-launch, because we didn’t have persistent inventory in DMZ, as a way for us to keep persistence on characters so you keep runs going.And then we added Exfil Streaks that gave you different Perks or Traits. And that was a feature that came out of necessity; we didn’t have a persistent inventory at the time. But in the end, it made us unique to a lot of extraction shooters where you had these different characters with their different stories and their different journeys.We leaned into that with this DMZ where we kept those Active Duty slots, but we made them real characters by giving them a persistent backpack, giving them a persistent loadout, a persistent trait tree. So each one of them represents that kind of hero’s journey over the course of multiple deployments.So maybe you have this character that’s your PVP character that’s built for that, and it all has your best equipment and everything. And then you have your other character that’s like a cash mule. So if you lose your main character, you’re like, ‘Well, I’m going back in with my cash mule. I’m going to hit the vault. I’m going to do dynamic ops to earn cash, and I’m going to build up and save enough money to rescue that character, get them back, and continue my progression.’Exploration and discovery was also a huge thing. We dabbled with locked spaces in the DMZ betaand we leaned heavily into that with this DMZ. I think Hajin is by far leaps and bounds the most interesting map we’ve ever made. And even today, I still play it and I end up in locations where I’m like, ‘I had no idea that this space even existed; I didn’t know that in the bottom of this police station there was a hole in the armory that cut through underwater.’ Like, there’s these really cool spaces and there’s this extreme opportunity for exploration. I probably could go on and on with learnings from the DMZ and what we’ve done.What new features separate this version of DMZ from the DMZ Beta experience?Cecot – I think the 3D Printer is a big one. Finding unique ingredients in the world and you’re like, ‘Oh, I need this to print plate carriers.’ Finding really rare ingredients that let you print Killstreaks. And, even more importantly, finding recipes in the world that upgrade your printer that allow you to print specific things is a big step forward for us in meaningful loot or meaningful looting experience.Our Gunsmith in DMZ is very different than the beta. Beta, we had a weapon cooldown slot that would come back and you could gear that weapon up. In Modern Warfare 4‘s DMZ, Gunsmith is driven by the cash that you find in game. Your gear is printed through the 3D printer. Your gun is cash driven. So, when you’re in match, when you’re doing dynamic ops, when you’re doing story missions, you’re getting this trickle of cash that is getting wired back to your FOB. And then that cash is used to build your weapons, and weapons still level up just like they do in core Multiplayer. They’re linked to each other. But, as you level up a gun and unlock attachments, you can pay for those attachments to build a gun, but building a really high rarity weapon means that you have to put a bunch of attachments on, and the cost of adding attachment goes up each time you add one. And certain attachments cost more – suppressors, drum mags, thermal optics, long range optics – those cost more in the ecosystem because they’re more effective in DMZ. So it makes killing another player and taking their gun that much more valuable.How have progression, rewards, or goals evolved to make the experience feel deeper and more replayable?Cecot – There’s multiple layers of progression in DMZ. You have your XP rank; every time you’re ranking up in DMZ, that’s your XP. You earned that. Even if you die, we’re not giving you half XP, nothing like that. That’s going to unlock your stations. That’s unlocking items for your stash. That’s unlocking recipes for your printer and things like that. So that’s one aspect of DMZ, that progression.Another thing is what we call our Boss Board. Throughout the map, we have these Lieutenants that spawn, and they’re dangerous and you have a board of them in your FOB and your job each season is to check off those Lieutenants that you’ve killed each one.At your FOB you can pay for intel for that Lieutenant so when you go into the game you know where they are and you can try and get to them first before other players in the match get to them. Or when you’re in game, you can climb Lieutenant Hunt Towers — there’s these really tall towers in the map that are dangerous. When you get to the top, there’s a computer and you access it, and it automatically tells you the closest Lieutenant to you is over here, go find them. And once you eliminate that Lieutenant they drop a set of dog tags.That’s where it gets really interesting in DMZ, is that dog tag case is also needed to populate your Boss Board for you and your squad, but everyone in the match can see that dog tag case when it drops. It becomes a signal of troop movement. You instantly know there’s a squad moving with that thing and you have people running and trying to head each other off at exfils to try and steal that case so that they can populate their Boss Board.I can go on and on, but DMZ, the way it’s built is there’s a kind of like a very rich sandbox of things to do. And then there’s a bunch of key systems in the FOB that you’re going to want to be engaging with and upgrading as you play to increase your agency, your power, and your control.What do you think players will recognize as a direct result of their feedback from the beta period of DMZ?Cecot – That’s a really good question. We had a big, huge feedback session that was really, really great because we’ve played it for three plus years. We’ve been pushing on it. We’ve been watching closely what’s happening with other games in the genre. And a bunch of the things that people wanted, we wanted too. We wanted to have persistent inventory in the beta. We wanted to have more player growth. We wanted to have more interesting loot and meaningful looting. That’s where we wanted to take DMZ.We also had a lot of players when they played the original DMZ, they didn’t know what they’re supposed to do. Extraction shooters often are a bit obtuse in this area. You kind of land in the world, and they’re like, ‘Hey, this is a fun sandbox.’ And you go find your fun. The DMZ beta was very much like that. You had your missions. There wasn’t an indicator in the world. You kind of had to read the print to see what you needed to do. So, for a lot of players they didn’t really get what they’re supposed to do.That’s why we leaned hard into our Story Missions. And that’s why we leaned hard into our Dynamic Operations. And that’s why we let you choose right from the front end. Because for a certain kind of player, that clarity of objective, is really important and also allows someone to get their feet underneath them. So both of those examples, I think, are key feedback moments that we’ve tried to address.How have you expanded the extraction mode to support different playstyles like solo, squad-based, etc.?Joe Cecot, Studio Multiplayer Creative Director – When we look at solo play, we aim to create a very interesting and dangerous world. We want you to respect the AI enemies. We feel like if people can just run around and do whatever they want, that we haven’t done our jobs. It’s that pacing of combat with AI that makes an extraction shooter really healthy. But if you’re a solo player, there’s no one to revive you.We had this idea: what if there was a way that you could always get yourself up one time? So we added the tourniquet mechanic – when you spawn into DMZ, you have your health bars at max. You have 150 health. That’s the max you can go up. And we still have regenerating health — if you take a bunch of damage, hide in the corner, it will come back up to full slowly.But if you go down completely and you’re down and you don’t have a self-revive equipped, you can use the tourniquet; you always get one. You pop that tourniquet and essentially you stop the bleeding. What that does is it gets you back up, but it gets you back up in a wounded state. You’ll need to find a med kit or bandage to repair yourself.And what this does is it allows us to have the world be pretty hard. Our Lieutenants are pretty hard, pretty scary. And if you stumble across one as a solo player and they down you, you have a moment to be like, ‘Well, that didn’t work out. I wasn’t really paying attention. They got the better of me.’ And you can crawl back into safety, the AI move on. If you prepped properly you can go into the corner, bandage yourself up to get back to full health. And then you can either say, ‘I’m going to take on this fight again,’ or ‘I’m going to go get more plate armor and come back later.‘ So that’s one of the key things to help with solo players.The stealth meter also helps the solo player control combat better. If I’m solo, I want to be able to control combat as I move through the world. When an AI starts spotting me, I get an audio cue and this soft indicator on the right that goes white to yellow to orange. As soon as that starts changing, I can pop back behind cover, I can hit the deck, and I can freeze that meter, and then it calms down and then they continue on their way.That feature allows players who are playing solo to really control the space and choose when they want to engage and go loud. Maybe they never want to. Maybe they just want to creep around with throwing knives. I think the stealth meter really helps the solo player.And we’ve made a ton of improvements for proximity chat we’ve upgraded the engine a bunch now where proximity chat has falloff with distance, has directionality, depending on where you’re facing, which ear it’s coming in, and then it also has kind of reverb depending on the interior that you’re in, so that they feel more like they’re in the world.Extraction shooters have had a significant moment in gaming for the last few years. How will DMZ differentiate itself from the pack?Cecot – I think there’s so many great things happening in the genre. It’s been really, really awesome to see the success that’s happened lately.I think us being first-person, and the richness of our sandbox; the amount of stuff that you can interact with and play around with. We have Dynamic Ops. We have Side Ops, which are essentially like side quests. We have these trucks in the world that you can find and you can repair that then have a UAV on the back. We have the fallout area in the northeastern part of the map, which is all irradiated because that’s where the meltdown happened. So you could take a gas mask or a hazmat suit and go in there to find loot that’s only available in there.Our rich sandbox combined with our first-person military theme is something that’s going to really resonate with people. And I think our weapon feel and our movement are a step above most of the games. It’s that action that’s going to be something that’s very different than other extraction shooters.Jackie Reynolds, Lead Game Designer. – We also have parts of our rich sandbox that we have in our multiplayer coming over from DMZ. Like being able to 3D Print Kill Streaks. Using something like Crossfire, which is a first-person A-10 airstrike, and you’re seeing just hundreds of dots on your screen and just laying fire onto them and under players underneath. I think leveraging the full COD sandbox into DMZ is like also something that’s going to be really unique.Cecot – Yeah, we have such an interesting challenge that I don’t think any other game in the industry has, is that whenever we make a new Lethal or we make a new Tactical or Field Upgrade, we’re like: how does this fit in 6v6 respawn modes like TDM? And how does this fit into modes like Search and Destroy? And how does this fit into Gunfight 2v2? And then how does this fit into DMZ and then Warzone? It’s that ecosystem of unique items that we have that I think will make DMZ feel way different.How did the team make sure DMZ feels accessible to new players while providing depth for dedicated fans?Cecot – That is a great question. One of the things we’re really proud of working on is the persistent inventory and on the interaction with it, constantly tweaking and adjusting to make sure that whether you’re on a keyboard and mouse and you can quickly drag and drop or quickly click, or if you’re on a controller anytime you’re giving focus to an item, we’re never putting the placard over top of other items. It’s never getting in the way of the interface.The other thing to keep it accessible for the Forward Operating Base was partly for the social aspect. You’re there with the squad, defaulted to third-person, so you can see what operator you’re running. You can see your squadmates and what they’re doing and what station they’re at. But it’s also an onboarding thing.As you’re ranking up in DMZ and you see your end game recap, you see you hit this level, and upgraded the 3D Printer and you’ll see the printer blinking — it’s a way for us to onboard the mechanics of DMZ and make sure that they’re easily understandable and accessible.Reynolds – Like we said before, also there’s mechanics shared across games, so you’ll be able to feel that clarity of like, ‘Oh, I know what this thing does because I used it over here.’Cecot – I think the stealth meter is accessibility. I think the tourniquet is accessibility. I think with us having the tourniquet and all of that, we leaned into making tier ones, but they’re not crazy dangerous. They still have no armor, they have no helmet. And so your initial encounter is also not too difficult. When a Lieutenant gets near you, there’s this sick splash across the screen comes up based on the Lieutenant, it’s meant that you need to be ready. We do a lot of things to try and telegraph and to onboard and to give you good feedback so you never feel you don’t know what just happened.What new mechanics make each deployment feel less predictable and more like a player’s own story?Cecot – I think the living world is probably the thing that does this the most. If you raise your star level and you push, new AI deploys on helicopters and on ground vehicles that are like a higher tier. And if you keep pushing, the next tier 3’s come and they’re like these white gas mask looking guys with this garbled voice. They’re scary. And if you keep pushing, eventually vehicles will chase you along the roads.Unlike the DMZ beta, they couldn’t do that. Now they chase you and you’re like, ‘Are those players or those AI?’ And then we also have these attack choppers that will roll in and chase you and there are guys riding on the side of the chopper shooting at you. It’s this concept where if you push, the world pushes back. That’s one of the things that I think will make every deployment feel a little bit different.So the dynamic living world, the combination of dynamic ops, which are different every time, the combination of players being in the space with you, and the combination of the world pushing you and forcing you to reroute and do things, like the bounty system… I think all of these things is what makes DMZ magical. Maybe you don’t hit them all every run, but each run is going to play a little bit differently with running into roaming commanders, with running into other players, with doing dynamic ops, with running into hard AI, and so on.What makes a “great DMZ run” in the eyes of the development team?Cecot – I think a great DMZ run is when you’re going in, you kind of have a goal in mind, and then at the end of that run, maybe you achieved your goal, maybe you didn’t, but you have a story.Maybe you went into Casino and you’re trying to hit the vault, and you hear other operators in there. And the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Maybe you guys say, ‘Hey, we’re cool, you’re cool, we’re all cool.’ And maybe as you’re walking away, one of them gets you in the back.I think that’s the magic of these games. I love core Multiplayer. I love Campaign. But they each have their thing that they bring to the table. And I think the uncertainty and the stories that come out of an extraction shooter is the thing that makes that genre so interesting. Talk about the games that are out today, they talk about them as social experiments. Like how do people behave? How honest are they? Who’s playing with you and like downing you and then talking to you?So I think that going in with a goal and trying to achieve that goal and having all sorts of things either get in your way, happen, you end up working together with people, you make a friend, you find that recipe you’ve been looking for, you say, ‘You know what, forget this Dynamic Op, I got the thing I need, we need to leave now.’ I think that’s the stuff that’s really interesting.I had this run in the original DMZ where I was playing solo and a couple players tried to hunt me. I got away. I got into a boat. I rode up the coast. I got to the final exfil. I’m sprinting and I’m spamming assimilation requests. No one’s responding. I run to the helicopter, the final Exfil, just as it’s going to take off. I dive into the back of it and I just lay prone and I say, ‘Friendly, friendly, friendly, friendly, friendly!’ And one guy’s like, ‘You’re cool, bro. Don’t worry.’ And as we’re taking off, the other guy goes, ‘This game mode is freakin’ sick.’ That’s what we want with DMZ. We want those stories.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and DMZ will be available October 23, 2026, for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, PlayStation 5, Steam, Battle.net, and Nintendo Switch 2. Play it on both XBOX Series X|S and XBOX on PC at no additional cost with Xbox Play Anywhere. Modern Warfare 4 is available for pre-order on the Xbox Store and other digital retailers.Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4 – Vault EditionActivision Publishing Inc.☆☆☆☆☆★★★★★$99.99Pre-orderPre-order loyalty discount for previous Call of Duty® owners: 10% off Modern Warfare® 4 Vault Edition for eligible players*.Pre-order any digital edition and receive:– Early access to the Open Beta**– Hunter Killer Operator Skin*** – Immediately unlock the Hunter Killer Operator Skin in Call of Duty®: Black Ops 7 and Call of Duty®: Warzone.The Vault Edition includes:– Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4– Hostile Alliance Operator Pack— 4 Operator Skins: Price, Valeria, Ghost, Blix– Special Forces Operator Pack— 4 Operator Skins representing the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and South Korea, each with voice packs in their local languages– Signature Weapon Collection— 5 Signature Weapons– BlackCell (1 Season)****— Includes: Battle Pass, 20 Tier Skips, 1,100 CP and more– DMZ Deployment Bonus— Additional bonus content in DMZWar erupts on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea launches a full-scale invasion that threatens to destabilize the world in Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4.A young squad of South Korean soldiers fight to survive on the collapsing front lines, while half a world away a vengeful Captain Price wages a personal war from the shadows as he stays one step ahead of those hunting him. As Price’s off-book mission collides with the forces behind the invasion, the war spreads beyond anyone’s control.Modern Warfare® 4 pushes the series into darker and more dangerous territory, where consequence and escalation bring long-running storylines to a powerful and emotional breaking point.– Campaign drops players into trench warfare in Korea, close-quarters combat in New York, high-octane chases through Paris, SAS night raids in Mumbai, and city-wide assaults to reclaim occupied territory.– Multiplayer delivers grounded, precise combat where fluid movement, player choice, and greater control define every engagement.– In DMZ, players operate as an off-the-books asset behind enemy lines, where every extraction run into contested territory forces hard choices about which objectives to pursue, what to secure, and when to get out.Available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC, not available on Xbox One.Online Multiplayer requires a Game Pass Essential subscription (sold separately).TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot required for PC, other security measures may be enforced. Learn more at https://support.activision.com/tpm.*Based on MSRP, discount applied at checkout. To qualify, must own and have played one of the following Call of Duty® titles on the same Xbox account as being used for current Pre-order: Modern Warfare® (2019), Modern Warfare® 2 Campaign Remastered (2020), Black Ops Cold War, Vanguard, Modern Warfare® II (2022), Modern Warfare® III (2023), Black Ops 6, or Black Ops 7. Offer subject to change, applies to Pre-orders only. Offer valid until 23rd October 2026. Visit support.activision.com/mw4 for full details.**Actual launch date(s), time(s), and platform availability of Beta subject to change. See www.callofduty.com/beta for more details. Minimum Open Beta duration is 2 days. Limited time only. Internet connection required. Game Pass Essential subscription may be required for MP Beta.***Call of Duty®: Black Ops 7 or Call of Duty®: Warzone on Xbox Series X|S / Xbox PC required to redeem. Sold / downloaded separately. Must be redeemed by October 23rd, 2027.****BlackCell, Battle Pass, Call of Duty® Points and Tier Skips will be accessible in Modern Warfare® 4 upon availability of the Season 1 Battle Pass in-game. Redemption applies to one Season of the Modern Warfare® 4 Battle Pass only.Content, features, services, online play, and support not available in all regions, and may vary, change, or terminate.Requires an Activision account and acceptance of the Activision Software License and Services Agreement. A mobile phone number linked to your Activision account may be required to play Modern Warfare® 4.Additional storage space may be required for mandatory game updates.For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com.©/TM/® 2026 Activision Publishing, Inc. This product contains software technology licensed from Id Software ('Id Technology'). Id Technology © 1999-2026 Id Software, Inc.Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4Activision Publishing Inc.☆☆☆☆☆★★★★★$69.99Pre-orderPre-order any digital edition and receive:– Early access to the Open Beta*– Hunter Killer Operator Skin** – Immediately unlock the Hunter Killer Operator Skin in Call of Duty®: Black Ops 7 and Call of Duty®: Warzone.War erupts on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea launches a full-scale invasion that threatens to destabilize the world in Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4.A young squad of South Korean soldiers fight to survive on the collapsing front lines, while half a world away a vengeful Captain Price wages a personal war from the shadows as he stays one step ahead of those hunting him. As Price’s off-book mission collides with the forces behind the invasion, the war spreads beyond anyone’s control.Modern Warfare® 4 pushes the series into darker and more dangerous territory, where consequence and escalation bring long-running storylines to a powerful and emotional breaking point.– Campaign drops players into trench warfare in Korea, close-quarters combat in New York, high-octane chases through Paris, SAS night raids in Mumbai, and city-wide assaults to reclaim occupied territory.– Multiplayer delivers grounded, precise combat where fluid movement, player choice, and greater control define every engagement.– In DMZ, players operate as an off-the-books asset behind enemy lines, where every extraction run into contested territory forces hard choices about which objectives to pursue, what to secure, and when to get out.Available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC, not available on Xbox One.Online Multiplayer requires a Game Pass Essential subscription (sold separately).TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot required for PC, other security measures may be enforced. Learn more at https://support.activision.com/tpm.*Actual launch date(s), time(s), and platform availability of Beta subject to change. See www.callofduty.com/beta for more details. Minimum Open Beta duration is 2 days. Limited time only. Internet connection required. Game Pass Essential subscription may be required for MP Beta.**Call of Duty®: Black Ops 7 or Call of Duty®: Warzone on Xbox Series X|S / Xbox PC required to redeem. Sold / downloaded separately. Must be redeemed by October 23rd, 2027.Content, features, services, online play, and support not available in all regions, and may vary, change, or terminate.Requires an Activision account and acceptance of the Activision Software License and Services Agreement. A mobile phone number linked to your Activision account may be required to play Modern Warfare® 4.Additional storage space may be required for mandatory game updates.For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com.©/TM/® 2026 Activision Publishing, Inc. This product contains software technology licensed from Id Software ('Id Technology'). Id Technology © 1999-2026 Id Software, Inc.Related Stories for “DMZ – New Intel on Call of Duty’s Extraction Shooter Experience”Category: XBOX Games ShowcaseMinecraft Dungeons II Gameplay Reveal and Release Date AnnounceCategory: XBOX Games ShowcaseXBOX Games Showcase 2026 Recap: The Return of Exclusives, World Premieres, and Anniversary HardwareCategory: XBOX Games ShowcaseClockwork Revolution: Burlesque, Bullets, and Butterfly EffectsThe post DMZ – New Intel on Call of Duty’s Extraction Shooter Experience appeared first on XBOX Wire.