Image: Activision
Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 are finally available on PlayStation 4 and 5. But the price for the classics is prohibitive. They cost the same as a modern A-game, but were first released in 2010 and 2012. Unsurprisingly, Activision isn’t making a big fuss about the launch.
Anyone who wanted to play the two older games had until now only been able to do so on PC and thanks to backwards compatibility on Xbox One and Series X|S. Owners of a modern PlayStation now also have this option, but they will have to pay dearly for the luxury: each of the two games costs around 40 euros.
This is how the total cost is determined
Thanks to a little magic of numbers, the price doesn’t even seem completely absurd at first glance, even if there is only an unmodified port of the oldie for the price of a remaster. The trick here is in the division. For €40, buyers only get the base game, while the season pass with all the multiplayer maps and the full zombies mode costs an additional around €30 each. The full version of Black Ops 1 and 2 costs 70 euros.
The price changes slightly thanks to the current introductory offer, which halves the price of the base game to €20 and reduces the price of the season pass to €10. There’s a catch here too: the discount is still available until August 6th, but only for PlayStation Plus customers. For a series that hardly allows for massive price cuts, even on ancient spin-offs, this would be almost tolerable for die-hard fans. But that’s not all.
Old game, new price: Black Ops should actually cost 40 euros
There isn’t even a clean port for this. According to Digital Foundry, the games themselves run at 1080p at 60 frames per second on the PlayStation 5. That’s more than on the Xbox since the original is rendered at its native resolution, but it’s well below the capabilities offered by the new hardware. According to users, the game also retains FOV sliders and other customization options, as well as several game modes. Separating the game and the Season Pass also has implications, as anyone with the Season Pass can only play with Season Pass holders and only with those playing on PlayStation. This group will remain manageable given the potentially very small number of players.
The main thing is to get rid of the disks
Even though in this case Activision is the party that determines prices and product (quality), this case once again shows the risks that Sony’s digital-only future poses. Unlike PCs, backward compatibility is in the hands of providers. There is only one store, one offer and one price. At least this is true while the store exists at all. Sony shut down the PlayStation 3 almost simultaneously with the death of the PlayStation disc.
