The New Call of Duty Black Ops Port Charges $40/£35 for a Basic 1080p Upgrade

Activision released ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, but the release has drawn significant criticism from tech experts and players over its pricing and minimal effort.

The ports cost $40 USD/£35 and do not include DLC. Despite being 16-year-old games originally released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the ports are basic upgrades with limited technical improvements. The PlayStation versions run at native 1080p resolution rather than the 4K output most contemporary ports achieve on PS5, lack anti-aliasing, and do not support 120Hz refresh rates or field-of-view sliders.

Digital Foundry’s analysis was particularly scathing, describing the port as reflecting “just how little time, resources and expertise” Activision invested in the project. Tech experts called it “a deeply odd state of affairs” for a 16-year-old game to receive such minimal enhancement on powerful modern hardware.

The PlayStation versions do perform better than Xbox backward compatibility versions, which run at 608p compared to PS4/PS5’s 1080p. The ports include Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies, but reviewers argue the package feels incomplete and overpriced given the minimal technical improvements and lack of additional content.

The release has disappointed fans hoping for proper remasters, with critics calling it “one big rip-off” that relies on nostalgia without justifying its premium pricing for what amounts to a minimal enhancement of a decades-old title.

The New Call of Duty Black Ops Port Charges $40/£35 for a Basic 1080p Upgrade

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