Call Of Duty Still Played By A “Shocking” Number Of People On PS4 And Xbox One

EA’s Battlefield 6 is ditching PS4 and Xbox, but Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is still releasing on those aging consoles. Why? There is a pretty straightforward explanation.

Treyarch senior director of production Yale Miller told Dexerto that “a shocking number of people play” Call of Duty on last-gen systems, and that supporting those consoles helps matchmaking efforts.

“It made sense for us to do it, and we could,” Miller said.

Black Ops 7’s graphics and performance on PS4 and Xbox One won’t be on par with the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions, Miller said. He added that the developer’s mindset when mapping out new features is that “you should never be thinking about old-gen for the features that you’re designing.”

Also in the interview, Treyarch associate director Lawrence Metten said the team knew it wanted to bring back the Theater mode–which allows players to rewatch matches–even though it won’t be supported on last-gen. “We can’t support it on old-gen. That’s not a reason not to do the feature. We’re gonna bite the bullet and disable it on old-gen,” he said.

In other Black Ops 7 news, the developer recently said it rejected a partnership with a “big brand” for collab skins in the wake of criticisms that Call of Duty skins have become too wacky.

Black Ops 7 launches on November 14, but you can play the game’s multiplayer beta in October. Just recently, Activision announced that the beta will include Zombies and shared a lot of details about Zombies.