Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Which Edition should you pre-order?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is set to arrive on October 28, 2022, but you can pre-order the game right now. There are only two versions of the game available: the Cross-Gen Bundle and the Vault Edition. And, unfortunately, the days of last-gen pricing appear to be over for Call of Duty.

As there’s no “Standard Edition” of Modern Warfare 2, the only option you can go with, regardless of which platform you plan to play on, is the Cross-Gen bundle. This costs $69.99 and includes the last-gen (PS4 or Xbox One) and new-gen (PS5 or Xbox Series X|S) versions of the game.

In other words, even if you only plan to play on a last-gen system, you’ll be paying $69.99 for the game. Now you’ll have the next-gen version available to you for free if you ever do upgrade your console, but there’s no cheaper last-gen pricing.

What’s included in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Cross-Gen Bundle?

The only perk of pre-ordering the Cross-Gen Bundle is early access to the Open Beta. Activision hasn’t announced exactly when the beta will begin or how long it will run. In the past, Activision has hosted open betas for the latest Call of Duty titles about a month before they release, so we can probably expect Modern Warfare 2’s open beta to come sometime in September.

What’s included in the Vault Edition?

Priced at $99.99, the Vault edition comes with everything in the Cross-Gen Bundle plus a bunch of digital bonuses such as the Red Team 141 Operator Pack, the FJX Cinder Weapon Vault (details to come), the Season 1 Battle Pass and 50 Tier Skips, the Ghost Legacy Pack with a dozen skils for the iconic operator plus 10 Tactical Weapon Blueprints, and 10 hours of 2XP.

The Red Team 141 Operator Pack comes with four playable Multiplayer Operators — Ghost, Farah, Price and Soap — each wearing a special masked outfit and themed around Ghost. We don’t know much about the FJX Cinder Weapon Vault, but Activision plans to share more closer to launch. The rest of the items are pretty self-explanatory.

Which Edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 should you pre-order?

This is totally subjective and depends on how big a fan of Call of Duty you are. I enjoy the series, but the digital bonuses in the Vault Edition don’t seem to warrant the extra $30 cost. The Season 1 Battle Pass is a nice inclusion but I’m not really big into digital cosmetics.

I’ll likely go with the Cross-Gen Bundle and even though I’m playing on PS5, I’m still frustrated on behalf of PS4 and Xbox One gamers about the lack of a Standard Edition with last-gen pricing.