Players flock to classic Call of Duty games after Xbox matchmaking fix

Some classic Call of Duty games have seen large spikes in player numbers after Xbox online matchmaking issues were resolved.

Recently, Microsoft deployed a fix to the Xbox 360 portion of Xbox Live, which resolved an issue affecting the matchmaking in older Call of Duty titles.

After the fix was deployed, 2012’s Call of Duty Black Ops 2 reportedly attracted over 10,000 simultaneous players on Sunday, while 2011’s Modern Warfare 3 drew over 7,000.

Currently, the following Call of Duty games are available on Xbox Series consoles via backward compatibility:

• Call of Duty 2 (2005)
• Call of Duty 3 (2006)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
• Call of Duty: World at War (2008)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)

The Xbox 360 titles in particular have seen a large increase in interest since they were added to the service. Physical copies of the old games have also maintained their value thanks to this.

While some older Call of Duty titles reportedly have a large issue with hackers and modded lobbies, users on social media are reporting that thanks to the large amount of interest in the games, and the revitalised player base, these hacked lobbies are becoming far less common.

This weekend, Xbox said it had signed a “binding agreement” with Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following Microsoft’s anticipated acquisition of Activision Blizzard.