Classic Call of Duty titles storm Xbox Store’s top-selling list after matchmaking fix

Classic Call of Duty games have staged an impressive comeback, topping the Xbox Store’s best-selling list after an unexpected matchmaking fix and a recent sale.

A tweet by CharlieIntel shows that older Call of Duty titles have claimed all five of the top “Best Sellers” spots on the Xbox Store. At the top of the list is Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012), closely followed by Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Black Ops (2010), and the Modern Warfare II Cross-Gen Bundle. Even Call of Duty MW3 (2011) appears above Diablo IV to claim the fifth spot at the time of writing.

The rising popularity of classic Call of Duty titles follows after a July 13 alert from Charlie Intelt hat Activision seemingly fixed the matchmaking issue with older Call of Duty games on Xbox 360.

They also noted that Activision is yet to explain the sudden fix, but it might be linked to Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision. And while Microsoft isn’t yet in a position to command such fixes, it makes sense that they would want the games from their soon-to-be-acquired company to be fully functional.

In another surprising reveal on July 17, the Twitter account ModernWarzone posted that the player count for these decade-old Call of Duty games was higher than that of Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 combined. IdleSloth84 supported this claim with screenshots showing the tremendous influx of players since the matchmaking fixes:

• Black Ops I – 123,852 players
• Black Ops II – 11,514 players
• Modern Warfare 3 – 79,619 players

These numbers could include bots and have sometimes shown inaccurate figures, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Nonetheless, the Xbox Top Selling list confirms the heightened interest in these older titles.

Many gamers consider the Call of Duty titles from 2007 to 2012 as the best in the series, with games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Black Ops II at the top of the list.

And now, with the rise of these classic Call of Duty titles in the Xbox Store’s best-selling games list, there’s no doubt that these ‘golden era’ games have been missed.