PlayStation just shipped a small feature that turned into a big embarrassment for Activision. A new update lets PS5 owners see the most popular games in their country in real time, and this week’s US list has a 14-year-old port sitting at #9: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Call of Duty HQ — the app that bundles Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6, and Warzone — doesn’t appear on the list at all.

A decade-old port beating the current flagship

Black Ops and Black Ops 2 got native PS4 and PS5 ports on July 9, 2026, priced at $39.99 (discounted to $19.99 for PlayStation Plus subscribers at launch). They weren’t remasters, just straight ports of the 2010 and 2012 originals with Iron Galaxy handling the work. Even so, the two games combined pulled in more than 7 million players in their first week, according to PlayStation’s experimental weekly player-count widget: Black Ops 2 alone drew 5.25 million weekly PS5 players in the US, with the original Black Ops adding roughly 1.96 million more. For comparison, Call of Duty HQ — covering Black Ops 7 and Warzone together — had been sitting at just under 5 million weekly PS5 players around the same period. Two months later, the gap hasn’t closed; it’s shown up on PlayStation’s own public rankings instead.

Black Ops 7 was already Activision’s weakest launch in years

The PS5 ranking is a symptom, not the disease. Black Ops 7 launched November 14, 2025 from Treyarch and Raven Software, and by the numbers, it’s the worst-performing mainline Call of Duty release in recent memory. Circana sales data reported by Push Square had Black Ops 7 finishing 2025 as just the fifth-best-selling game of the year in US dollar sales — behind NBA 2K26, Borderlands 4, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Battlefield 6 — which analyst Mat Piscatella flagged as the franchise’s lowest year-end ranking since 2008’s World at War, a 17-year low. On Steam specifically, Black Ops 7 sold roughly 401,000 copies in its first 26 days, compared to Black Ops 6’s 2.3 million copies over the same window in 2024, according to GameSpot’s report on the sales data. Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said publicly that the game is “on track to perform over 60 percent below last year,” attributing the drop to “intense competition” from titles like Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders — even though, as critics pointed out, Battlefield 6 was drawing roughly double Black Ops 7’s Steam concurrent player peak at the time.

Activision is changing its release strategy because of it

The response has already reshaped Activision’s roadmap. The company acknowledged that “the franchise has not met your expectations fully” and confirmed it will no longer ship Modern Warfare and Black Ops entries in consecutive years — ending the back-to-back annual cadence that’s defined Call of Duty since 2019. Activision has also rolled out free trials for Black Ops 7’s multiplayer and Zombies modes and a round of discounts just a month after launch, alongside promises of “unprecedented season support” to win players back. None of that has stopped players from defaulting to Black Ops 2 instead of the new game while they wait for whatever comes next — reportedly Modern Warfare 4.

Why a decade-old port is winning

Part of the appeal is obvious: Black Ops 2’s Pick 10 create-a-class system, map roster, and Zombies maps are fan favorites that predate the live-service bloat, battle passes, and yearly reinvention that have defined Call of Duty since. Getting that experience at $19.99 with PS Plus, on modern hardware, with none of Black Ops 7’s launch issues, is a straightforward pitch. It also means Activision is now competing with its own back catalog for player attention — a problem money can’t fully solve, since discounting the new game just narrows the price gap with the free-to-cheap legacy option rather than closing it.

Whether that’s a temporary blip while Black Ops 7’s content cycle plays out, or a preview of how players will treat Modern Warfare 4 if it repeats the same annual formula, is the question Activision now has to answer heading into 2027.

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For more on how major publishers are navigating a rougher 2026, see our coverage of Xbox’s 2026 restructuring and studio spinoffs and record industry profits alongside record layoffs.