Thousands of Call of Duty fans are playing classic Xbox 360 titles thanks to a server fix

theverge.com:

By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.

Activision has fixed matchmaking server issues in some older Call of Duty titles for the Xbox 360. Players have been complaining about matchmaking issues in classics like Call of Duty: Black Ops and the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 over the past few years, as they haven’t been able to get into lobbies for multiplayer modes. Now that the servers are back and working, the player count in Call of Duty: Black Ops (which might not be totally accurate) stands at more than 100,000.

That doesn’t mean thousands of Xbox 360 consoles are suddenly being powered on. It’s all possible thanks to Microsoft’s backward compatibility support on Xbox, allowing Xbox One and Xbox Series S / X owners to play these classic Call of Duty games. All you have to do is put your old disc in or even install a digital copy of the game, and all your Xbox 360 progress from more than a decade ago will have been preserved, including your Call of Duty prestige ranks.

It’s not all smooth sailing, though. Despite the thousands of people returning to play these Call of Duty games, Game Rant points out that there are some issues with input latency on Xbox Series S / X emulating these older games. With Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard at its final stages, it’s possible we’ll see those input latency issues fixed soon. After all, it can’t be pure coincidence that these Call of Duty games are now suddenly fixed just as Microsoft gets ready to put Activision games on its Xbox Game Pass service.

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