A recent server fix has led to Xbox 360 Call of Duty games becoming top-sellers on the Xbox Store.
As spotted by The Verge, titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Call of Duty: Black Ops II finally had their long-running matchmaking issues fixed by Activision Blizzard. As a result, those games have seen rising player counts, thanks to backwards compatibility on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
These games (and many more) are also currently on sale over on the Xbox Store. Whether the sale was intentionally meant to coincide with the fix, the timing appears to have helped their visibility grow.
Microsoft’s own Shadowrun saw a player surge after another recent fix, but the Call of Duty titles are particularly notable given the Xbox maker’s ongoing attempts to acquire Activision Blizzard.
Moreover, it further shows that the oldest (possibly “retro”) installments still have some life in them. Modern Warfare 2 (2009) is the only of these three titles to have more than one release, as its campaign was remastered for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2020.
This also comes months after Activision Blizzard released slightly less older games (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019, Call of Duty: Vanguard, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War) on Steam. These titles were previously locked to Battle.net but that exclusivity was reportedly a “resounding failure.”
Between these games, Shadowrun, and the recent surge of players in Team Fortress 2, it’s clear that older games can continue to live on longer than developers would initially believe.