Two ports of games from 2010 and 2012 just walked into the PlayStation Store and beat GTA 6 pre-orders. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 may have left a sour taste for many fans last year, but the appetite for the Black Ops name clearly hasn't gone anywhere. The original Black Ops and Black Ops 2 PS ports launched last week, and as of this weekend, they're sitting at number one and number two on the PS Store bestsellers chart.
Nostalgia with real numbers behind it
Black Ops 2 is currently the top-selling game on the PlayStation Store. The original Black Ops sits directly behind it in second place. That means both ports are outselling College Football 27 (which also launched last week), Fortnite (which is free), and GTA 6 pre-orders, which have been hovering near the top of the PS Store since Rockstar first opened them.
The player sentiment backs up those sales numbers. Black Ops 2 has already collected more than 25,000 PS Store ratings, sitting at 4.77 out of 5. The original Black Ops matches that score. For context, Black Ops 7 is at 3.91, Battlefield 6 is at 4.07, and Arc Raiders sits at 4.1. Two decades-old ports are outscoring the current-gen competition by a significant margin.
What the PS Plus discount is doing to these numbers
Here's the thing: $40 per game for ports with minimal technical upgrades was always going to be a hard sell at face value. Activision positioned these as polished re-releases rather than remasters, meaning you're largely getting the original experience with some light cleanup. The DLC situation made it worse, with players needing to pay extra to access content they may have already owned on older hardware.
And yet the charts don't lie. The PS Plus half-price window has clearly pushed a massive number of subscribers to pull the trigger. The combination of nostalgia, discounted pricing, and a genuine hunger for the classic Black Ops formula after Black Ops 7 underperformed has created a sales result that would have seemed far-fetched a few months ago.
The Xbox side of this story is a different picture
While PlayStation players are enjoying fresh servers with clean online lobbies, Xbox owners are in a frustrating spot. Both games have always been available on Xbox through backwards compatibility, but those servers are overrun with hackers, making online play nearly unplayable. The irony is hard to miss: Activision is owned by Xbox, yet PlayStation players are getting the better experience right now.
Xbox players have been vocal about feeling left behind, and it's a fair complaint. Getting hacker-free servers on a platform that already owns the studio behind the game shouldn't be this complicated.
The Black Ops 6 hangover is real
The success of these ports says something specific about where the Call of Duty community is right now. Black Ops 6 was a divisive release, and the series has struggled to recapture the magic of the Treyarch-era games that players grew up with. Black Ops 2 in particular has maintained a legendary reputation in the community for its multiplayer balance, Zombies content, and campaign. People aren't just buying these ports for nostalgia; they're returning because what came after never quite matched what came before.
If you're jumping back in or want to get the most out of your time with the current entry in the series, the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 guides our have you covered for everything from loadout builds to progression tips. And for broader strategy content across the shooter genre, the full gaming guides hub is worth bookmarking.
