Rather than a switch-flip that allows all old games to work with the Xbox One, it’s a slow trickle where each game has to be massaged gently into becoming backward compatible. As such, Microsoft has created a sort of priority list where fans can vote on which games they want to see make the leap.
The news today is that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has finally amassed enough votes to pass up Red Dead Redemption for the number one spot on the most-requested list. In the top ten games on the chart, there are five Call of Dutys, including both Black Ops and all three Modern Warfares. If you expand it to the top twelve, even World at War makes the cut.
But despite this “by popular demand” chart, I have serious doubts that Activision will see the financial or even logical benefit of allowing Black Ops 2 or any other Call of Duty games to become backward compatible on Xbox One. Think that’s terrible? Well, stop and consider it for a minute.
By making Call of Duty games backward compatible, Activision runs into the same problems as what I’ve previously discussed regarding why we haven’t yet seen an HD remastered collection of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games. Yes, Activision is happy you love those titles, but their yearly release model could be in direct danger if suddenly The Black Ops Collection and Advanced Warfare 2 are released in the same year. It could fraction their market badly, and weaken sales for their current iteration of the game. Even though Call of Duty is still selling crazily well compared to the industry as a whole, the last few games have brought sharp sales declines since the record-breaking days of Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2, and Activision certainly doesn’t want to accelerate that trend.
But this is the argument against possible remasters, where, at the very least, Activision is still pocketing the sales from those kinds of collections, even if Advanced Warfare 2 or Black Ops 3 suffers a bit. What then is the financial logic behind letting all players play those older games for free on Xbox One through backward compatibility?
In that situation, Activision runs into all the same problems, old classics that distract from their current offerings, but they’re not even selling copies of the games. Either players already own them and simply have to pop them in their disc drives, or they can pick them up for a few bucks thirdhand at GameStop, which gives Activision nothing.
Activision has grown into the gaming behemoth it is today by showing shrewd business sense when it comes to monetizing almost all of its top franchises. Outside of World of Warcraft subscription revenue, their biggest financial puzzle piece is the yearly haul that comes with Call of Duty, and it seems unlikely that they’d do anything to threaten that golden goose. I can see an argument being made for eventual remasters of Modern Warfare or Black Ops because Activision at least sees some financial benefit, but it’s much harder to make a case that backward compatibility for every last-gen Call of Duty game is good business. Other games high up on the list like Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption don't have the same yearly release schedule that would make backward compatibility much of an issue (though neither of those games have had HD remasters yet either, which likely remains the more attractive option for the publisher).
At this point, Activision doesn’t really need “consumer goodwill” on its side, which is what many will say is a benefit of something like this. They don’t have any enormous disasters to make up for in recent memory, and players that are currently hooked on Warcraft, Diablo, Destiny, or Call of Duty are going to buy new games/expansions in those series regardless of whether or not Activision stays mute about backward compatibility.
Best case scenario, these games could become playable on Xbox One, but something done for free like that would come with feature cuts. It would be very unlikely that you’d see Activision turn on servers for online multiplayer for backward compatible versions of the games. That would probably only happen for a fully-fledged remaster, if at all. Therefore, players may have to be content with just replaying the campaign or doing local co-op for a mode like Zombies. Maybe that’s a good enough of a compromise for some, but others would likely be disappointed that multiplayer isn’t on the table.
Despite fans very loudly proclaiming that they want to relive their favorite Call of Duty games from the good ‘ol days, with Activision trying to maintain interest in new installments of the series, it’s easy to see how backward compatibility isn’t the most attractive prospect. They don’t have much to gain, but they have everything to lose if Call of Duty’s star fades more quickly than it needs to, strangled by its own ghosts.
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Watch below to see when Call of Duty may return to World War II:
