Image credit: Activision Blizzard

In quite an unusual way, Call of Duty Black Ops series developer Treyarch announced on X that the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2 games are "being ported" to PlayStation. The two classic games will arrive at some point in July, and will include all three modes from the originals: campaign, Zombies, and multiplayer.

The existence of these re-releases leaked a while ago, and listings even appeared on Korea's rating board, which could explain why the announcement was given so little fanfare. Treyarch's X posts did not reveal pricing, whether or not a bundle including the two games will be available, or whether DLC add-ons will be included. It did reveal, however, that Iron Galaxy will be handling porting duties. Iron Galaxy is mainly a work-for-hire studio that has delivered ports and remasters for many games in the past, often to a very high standard.

We reached out to Activision to try and get some clarity on what players can expect. The publisher confirmed that the Black Ops 1&2 re-releases will be available on PS4 and PS5, stressing that these are ports and not remasters.

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This is a crucial distinction that players should keep in mind before getting too excited. While Treyarch has not revealed any official details yet, we can speculate based on the information we have today.

First, the fact that these are not remasters, and that they're going to be available across two PlayStation generations, indicate that they won't be native to PS5, meaning support for 120Hz and other PS5 features is unlikely.

Re-releases are essentially just that; locked to whatever was possible on original hardware. Black Ops games from that era are also known for locking certain gameplay characteristics, such as physics, to the player's framerate, meaning any tweaks to that would require extra work.

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The other, larger and more impactful potential issue is whether the games will use their existing server infrastructure - in other words, if players will be able to jump into existing lobbies on PS3, where the original games were released. Anyone who plays Call of Duty multiplayer on PS3 and Xbox 360 will tell you that most of those classic games are full of hacked lobbies. Because those systems no longer receive security updates, players are able to inject all kinds of code into their games, modify files and essentially control parameters they wouldn't be able to in a normal game.

Assuming that same server infrastructure is being used, rather than dedicated servers controlled by Activision, it won't be long before multiplayer becomes nearly unplayable thanks to all the hacked lobbies. In essence, then, this looks like a clean way to get the two classics on modern PlayStation consoles. On Xbox, they're available through backwards compatibility, whereas PlayStation does not have its own version of backwards compatibility, hence the need for these ports. This is similar to what Rockstar did with the Red Dead Redemption re-release on PS4 in 2023.

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