Black Ops 4 Blackout Beta Release Date Revealed

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is shaping up to offer an experience that's mostly similar to previous installments in the sub-series, save for one key difference. For the first time in Call of Duty history, Black Ops 4 won't have a single-player campaign. Instead, it'll offer up a battle royale mode called Blackout.

That 2018's Call of Duty game is launching with a battle royale mode isn't very surprising. Ever since PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched last year, battle royale has taken off in a pretty big way. When Epic released its own spin on battle royale with a free-to-play mode for Fortnite later on in the year, the genre became even more popular – to the point where it's arguably the more popular game genre at the moment.

A number of developers have followed in the footsteps of PUBG and Fortnite. Some of these new battle royale games have been spinoffs of existing games, such as Realm Royale, which is based on the game Paladins, but there have been some other titles released as standalone games, like the ill-fated Radical Heights. With everyone rushing for a slice of the battle royale pie, it was only a matter of time before the craze spread to major franchises.

There's still a lot we don't know about Blackout, but Activision has told us when we'll be able to find out more. The company has announced via Twitter that the beta for Blackout will begin on September 10. Keep in mind that the September 10 date only applies to PS4 – we're not sure when other platforms will get access to the beta.

In order to participate, you'll need to have pre-ordered the game. Pre-ordering also granted access to the standard multiplayer beta, which took place earlier this month. The hope is that Activision describes Blackout mode in further depth at some point before the beta starts, but if it doesn't, then we can look forward to all being revealed on September 10.