Activision to release Black Ops 1 & 2 on PS4, PS5 to get past Sony's lack of PS3 backward compatibility

Activision has an interesting strategy to get past Sony's lack of native PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility on modern PlayStation consoles.

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In an unprecedented move that's rarely seen in the video games industry, Activision has announced it will re-release Black Ops and Black Ops II on PS4 and PS5. The publisher confirms that these will just be ports, not remasters, and will have campaign, multiplayer, and zombies. Black Ops II remains the fastest-earning Call of Duty game in history with $500 million made in just 1 day of sales.

The strategy here feels obvious; Xbox is bleeding profits with a paltry 3% margin and needs more higher-margin earnings. These gen 7 Call of Duty games are still popular and Microsoft/Activision hope to capitalize on nostalgia as well as pent-up demand for these classics, as Sony has underserved PS3 games to its PS4 and PS5 generations because there's no direct PS3 software compatibility for today's PS consoles.

Activision took matters into its own hands, conscripting Iron Galaxy to re-release ports of these highly valuable shooters. If it works out and the games sell millions of copies--which they should--then Activision (and Xbox as a whole) will be in a better position. Call of Duty games tend to deliver high-margin sales, meaning the huge volume of games sold usually eclipses the development budgets of the games and leads to high profits.

This decision somewhat highlights Microsoft's differentiated model for the franchise. On one hand, Xbox wants to use Call of Duty to help drive Game Pass subscriptions. Old Call of Duty games are rotated into Game Pass and can be played for a set fee instead of buying each game individually. That's a bonus for Xbox, but on PlayStation, there is no Game Pass, so Call of Duty is strictly sales-only on that platform.

Essentially, what Microsoft has done is skewed the franchise so that it can help maximize the potential on both platforms.

Unfortunately, the model is not without its problems. Microsoft pulling Call of Duty out of Game Pass not only reduced the price of the subscription itself, but also preserved the sales value of new Call of Duty games, which are now buy-to-play only at launch on both PlayStation and Xbox consoles.