Classic Xbox 360-era Call of Duty games are outselling 2022’s Modern Warfare II

Recent updates to its online services have increased sales of classic Call of Duty titles on Xbox, with multiple titles ranking among the platform's best-sellers.

The details:

• Multiple games from the "golden age" of the COD franchise, such as the original Modern Warfare series, Black Ops, and World at War, have sold like hotcakes on the Xbox store after it was announced that Microsoft had updated servers for the older titles alongside discounted prices, fixing broken matchmaking on Xbox consoles. Modern Warfare 2 is currently at the top of the charts, followed by Black Ops 2, Black Ops, and Modern Warfare 3. World at War and Black Ops 3 are also in the top ten, and increased sales of the classic games have resulted in them outselling the most recent COD title, Modern Warfare II.
• The games' in-game player counts are still broken, with numbers in the hundreds of thousands, but it's undeniable that the situation has "revived" the communities surrounding them, with more accurate numbers of 5,000-15,000 concurrent players coming from other sources. Still, the PC and PlayStation 3 versions of the games have yet to receive any sort of patch, so these figures could rise further if Microsoft or Activision find a way to address them.
• The reason for the sudden fixes after years of unresolved issues has yet to be revealed, but with Microsoft's acquisition of COD publisher Activision Blizzard looking almost certain, the games are likely to arrive on Xbox Game Pass once the deal is completed. If the games do become available on Game Pass, they will be playable right away thanks to backward compatibility, though there have been reports of cheaters still causing havoc since modded Xbox 360 consoles can still join online lobbies.

More Activision Blizzard news:

• Activision Blizzard has laid off approximately 50 employees from its esports division, leaving fans to wonder what will become of its competitive Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues in the future. Before the layoffs, the company was working on new tools to run tournaments, and it has been suggested that esports will be handled by an external contractor in the future.
• Sony and Microsoft have agreed to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for at least the next ten years, following Microsoft's victory over the Federal Trade Commission, which allows it to complete its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The rest of the publisher's IPs, however, are not covered by the agreement, leaving the door open for future exclusive entries in iconic franchises like Spyro and Crash.