Some may remember a certain E3 where the head of Xbox announced the backward compatibility of hundreds of Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. That was in 2015, and we were in the room to confirm that the announcement was warmly received. Several years later, this capability shows that Xbox made the right choice.
Demand for Call of Duty is experiencing a resurgence
To understand the current surge in popularity of certain older Call of Duty games released on Xbox 360, it's important to remember that the servers were experiencing problems and that Microsoft implemented fixes last July. The effect was immediate: players returned en masse, to the point that over 200,000 players were still using the old servers.
Call of Duty Black Ops, Black Ops 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 then took the lead in sales on the Microsoft Store, and it's not over yet as this breakthrough is also seen globally.
As evidenced by the top-selling British video games for July, two Call of Duty games released in 2009 and 2012 are in the top 10. Both games were also on sale during the Xbox sales on the Microsoft marketplace.
Top 10 best-selling games in the UK in July 2023
- 1 FIFA 23 (EA)
- 2 Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
- 3 Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
- 4 Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Activision Blizzard)
- 5 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – 2009 Edition (Activision Blizzard)
- 6 Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)
- 7 F123 (EA)
- 8 Minecraft (Mojang)
- 9 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – 2022 Edition (Activision Blizzard)
- 10 Diablo 4 (Activision Blizzard)
The presence of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 also results from fairly aggressive promotions on these games in July, and demonstrates once again the wealth that a catalogue of quality older games can generate.
In total, 2.36 million digital and physical AAA video games were sold in the UK in July, up 31% year-over-year.
1.66 million games were sold in digital download stores (+40 % compared to the previous year), while 701,000 games were sold in physical points of sale (+12 %).
On the console front, PS5 sales increased by 68.3 TEUs compared to the same period last year. Xbox sales, however, fell by 12.3 TEUs in July compared to June. Since the beginning of the year, Xbox console sales have declined by 22.8 TEUs in this territory.
If you also want to get back into Call of Duty Black Ops 2 on Xbox, here are some offers to find the best price:
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