Old Call of Duty titles surprisingly conquer the Xbox Store, displacing even current titles like Diablo IV, Wild Hearts or Dead Island 2.
Normally, the Xbox sales charts are dominated by current titles, which in most cases were released only a few days or months ago. However, if you’ve taken a look at the list since 18 July, you might be surprised, because old Call of Duty titles have a firm grip on the charts.
Second Spring
Whoever thinks that the current best-selling game in the Xbox store is Diablo IV, Wild Hearts or maybe Dead Island 2 better take a closer look and don’t be surprised to find Call of Duty games at the top, some of which are more than ten years old.
Top of the list at number one is Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012), followed by Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Black Ops (2010), Modern Warfare II and the cross-gen bundle of Modern Warfare 3 (2011).
With online matchmaking working on old Call of Duty games on Xbox 360, the old Call of Duty games are now the best selling games on the Xbox Store. pic.twitter.com/ZoNCA3vmN8
– CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) July 19, 2023
But where did the second spring come from for the aging CoD games? After Activision Blizzard had several fan projects of old CoD titles terminated at the end of May, the community was fuming and accused the game manufacturer of no longer being interested in its old games and leaving the fans out in the cold.
Many fans were all the more surprised when the studio fixed the matchmaking of several old CoD games on 12 July, making many of the old titles suddenly playable again.
It appears Activision has fixed matchmaking on older Call of Duty games on Xbox 360 pic.twitter.com/eH1snzx0NI
– CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) July 12, 2023
Why now?
For years it was quiet about the old Call of Duty games, which Activision seemed to have little to no interest in. The surprising turnaround could be related to the planned purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, which got the green light from the FTC on 12 July and is thus virtually a done deal.
Even if Microsoft does not yet have the power to force Activision to take such steps, it is of course in the publisher’s interest to ensure that all its products are in as good a condition as possible before the billion-dollar deal is completed, in order to avoid any final pitfalls and to avoid jeopardising the purchase in the final stages.
There are more people playing 10+ year old Call of Duty games on Xbox right now than there are people playing Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 COMBINED.
Crazy how many people are playing the old games after Activision decided to fix the matchmaking and servers on Xbox. pic.twitter.com/cNdnvQ7j6N
– ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) July 17, 2023
By the way, anyone who thinks that the nostalgic shooters are no longer played by anyone should take a look at the partly impressive figures that IdleSloth84_ published on Twitter and which show how large the community of games like Black Ops, Black Ops II or Modern Warfare 3 still is even after more than ten years.
As the well-known CoD influencer ModernWarzone found out, more people currently play CoD games that are more than ten years old than Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 combined.
The higher player numbers could once again drive up the purchase price for Microsoft and bring an extra bonus into the coffers of those responsible at Activision Blizzard.
