Key Takeaways:
- PlayStation’s new most-played widget places Black Ops 2 at #9 in the US, with the modern Call of Duty HQ app nowhere on the list
- Black Ops 2 pulled in an estimated 5.25 million weekly PS5 players in the US at launch — more than Black Ops 7 and Warzone combined
- The Black Ops 1 and 2 PS5 ports, released July 9, 2026, have reportedly sold over 11 million copies combined and generated around $435 million
- Treyarch has officially said goodbye to the Black Ops era, teasing “something new” and “something nobody’s ever experienced before”
- Modern Warfare 4 is the next Call of Duty, set to launch in October 2026 — but with GTA 6 arriving in November, the timing isn’t great
- In August, Black Ops 2 was still the #1 most downloaded game in the EU on PlayStation
A 14-year-old game just showed up on PlayStation’s brand new most-played list and beat the entire modern Call of Duty ecosystem to do it. That’s not a headline anyone expected heading into September 2026 — but here we are, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense when you think about what’s happened to the franchise over the past couple of years.
PlayStation’s New Widget Just Put Activision on Blast
PlayStation quietly rolled out a new feature this week that lets players see exactly which games are most popular in their country right now. The US list came out and it’s largely predictable at the top — Fortnite, Minecraft, GTA 5, NBA 2K27, Marvel Rivals, the freshly launched Marvel’s Wolverine. All the usual suspects.
But sitting right there at number 9? Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
Not Black Ops 7. Not Warzone. Not the Call of Duty HQ launcher — the hub that houses Activision’s entire current-gen shooter lineup. That thing doesn’t even appear on the list. The game that’s beating it all is a port of a 2012 shooter that originally launched on PS3.
That’s not just a fun bit of gaming trivia. That’s a pretty loud statement about where the Call of Duty fanbase actually is right now.
The Numbers Behind Black Ops 2’s Comeback
This didn’t come out of nowhere. When Activision surprise-dropped the Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 ports for PS4 and PS5 on July 9, 2026, the PlayStation Store briefly crashed from the traffic. Both titles immediately shot to the top of the sales charts, and the numbers that followed were staggering.
According to data from Alinea Analytics, Black Ops 2 pulled in around 5.25 million weekly PS5 players in the US alone in its first week — a figure that reportedly exceeded Black Ops 7 and Warzone combined on PlayStation during the same period. For comparison, a Charlie Intel post from May 2026 had shown the entire Call of Duty HQ launcher — which covers Black Ops 6, Black Ops 7, and Warzone — sitting at just under 5 million weekly players.
A single port of a game from 2012 did more numbers than all of modern Call of Duty combined on PlayStation. Let that sink in.
By July 16, the two ports together were estimated at around 6.8 million active US players. Combined sales across both games reportedly topped 11 million copies on PlayStation, generating roughly $435 million. Black Ops 2 alone is estimated to have moved around 8.2 million copies just in July. Those numbers put it among the best-selling games of 2026 overall — competing with and beating major new AAA releases. As a point of comparison, Ubisoft’s ground-up Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced remake sold around 1.5 million copies on PS5 in July. Black Ops 2 reportedly outsold that by over 6 million copies on the same platform during the same month.
And the momentum hasn’t really stopped. By August, Black Ops 2 was still the #1 most downloaded game on PlayStation in the EU, according to the official PlayStation Store charts. Now, in September, it’s showing up in the US top 10 most-played list while the current Call of Duty HQ ecosystem sits off the board entirely.
Why Are People Playing a 2012 Game Over Modern Call of Duty?
Anyone who’s spent time in the Call of Duty community over the last decade already knows the answer to this, but it’s worth actually saying out loud.
Black Ops 2 is widely considered one of the best — if not the best — entries in the entire franchise. The campaign had a branching structure with multiple endings that nobody’s really replicated since. The multiplayer was tight, balanced, and had one of the best pick-10 systems the series ever produced. Zombies was at a creative peak, with Tranzit sparking debate that’s still going years later and maps like Mob of the Dead cementing the mode as a genre unto itself.
Compare that to what the franchise delivered with Black Ops 7. EA’s Battlefield 6 actually outsold Black Ops 7 in 2025, dropping it to just the number 5 spot for the year in the US — a genuinely embarrassing result for what was once the most dominant shooter franchise in the industry. Player reception was underwhelming. The goodwill from Black Ops 6, which made genuine improvements to the formula, got burned through fast.
So when Activision suddenly made the two most beloved entries in the franchise available on modern hardware at $39.99 each ($19.99 with PS Plus on launch), a massive chunk of the audience that had quietly drifted away from modern Call of Duty came rushing back. Not to Black Ops 7. Not to Warzone. To a pair of games from 2010 and 2012.
That’s not nostalgia for its own sake. That’s a playerbase telling the industry exactly what it values — and the industry not having listened for long enough that people gave up waiting.
Treyarch Says Goodbye to Black Ops — And Hints at Something Massive Next
The timing of all this is interesting because just yesterday, Treyarch officially closed the chapter on the Black Ops era with the final Season 6 update for Black Ops 7. And they didn’t go quietly.
In the final Black Ops 7 Dev Talk video, Treyarch design director Kevin Drew said: “This is a bittersweet goodbye. But I think over the last two years, we’ve learned a lot. We’ve tried a lot of things in our current era. But we’re ready to make something new and something that nobody’s ever experienced before.”
Treyarch co-studio head Yale Miller also said the team was “extremely proud” of what it shipped and that Black Ops 6 set “new benchmarks” before Black Ops 7 delivered the “biggest Black Ops game ever.” But even with that framing, the message was clearly: we’re done with this era, and something different is coming.
What exactly that looks like is unknown. Treyarch created the Black Ops franchise back in 2010, and it’s been the backbone of their identity for 16 years. Walking away from that brand — or whatever form “walking away” actually takes here — is a significant moment. There are leaks and insider reports suggesting Activision’s 2027 entry could be a “completely new subfranchise” built by Sledgehammer Games with a focus on movement and martial arts, which would mean Treyarch’s mysterious next project might land in 2028 or beyond.
Either way, by the time we see what Treyarch is actually building, we’re probably looking at a long wait. The question is whether the franchise can stay relevant long enough to matter when they return.
Modern Warfare 4 Has to Fix This — But the Window Is Tight
The next Call of Duty is Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward, set to launch in October 2026. Unlike the last several entries, it will not be included with Xbox Game Pass at launch — a deliberate shift Microsoft announced to try to push actual sales numbers. The game’s core modes include campaign, multiplayer, and DMZ alongside Warzone.
There’s legitimate hope that Modern Warfare 4 can reset the trajectory. The Modern Warfare brand still carries weight, and Infinity Ward has a history of delivering entries that feel more polished and grounded than the Black Ops line. If they can bring back some of the players who drifted to playing Black Ops 2 instead of Black Ops 7, there’s a real recovery to be had.
But the timing is brutal. GTA 6 launches November 19, just weeks after Modern Warfare 4 drops in October. Rockstar is running one of the most aggressive marketing campaigns in gaming history, and based on everything we’ve seen, GTA 6 is going to pull a massive amount of attention and player hours away from everything else on the market almost immediately. Getting Call of Duty’s momentum back during that window is a hard ask.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth Activision probably doesn’t want to stare at too long: if Black Ops 2 from 2012 is consistently beating your current live service games in active player counts, the problem isn’t the competition. The problem is what you’ve been shipping.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Call of Duty Ports?
One obvious takeaway from all of this is that there’s massive untapped demand for more classic Call of Duty ports. The numbers prove it. If a straight port — no remaster, no graphical upgrades, no modern quality-of-life features like a proper FOV slider — can generate over $400 million on PlayStation alone, there are decades of beloved Call of Duty entries that Activision hasn’t touched yet.
Original Modern Warfare 2 (2009) feels like the most obvious candidate. Modern Warfare (2007) alongside it. World at War. These are games that players have been asking to come back in some form for years, and the Black Ops ports proved that you don’t even need to remaster them — just make them available and price them accessibly.
The missing modes from the current Black Ops ports (Wager Matches, Theater Mode, League Play were all cut) show there are still complications with bringing these games back cleanly. But if those can be ironed out, the appetite is clearly there in a big way.
What’s happening with Black Ops 2 right now is one of the clearest market signals the games industry has seen in a while. Players know what they love, and when given the choice between what they loved and what they’ve been handed lately, they’re choosing the past. That’s both a wake-up call and an opportunity — and it’ll be fascinating to see if Activision is actually paying attention.
For more on what’s shaping up to be one of the most interesting periods in gaming in years, check out our breakdown of the Wardogs crunch controversy and the 007 First Light Switch 2 delay to March 2027.
