Call of Duty Black Ops 1 and 2 PS4/PS5 ports sold 11.2 million copies in under a month

The Black Ops 1 and 2 PlayStation ports launched in mid-July and have already shifted 11.2 million combined copies across PS4 and PS5, according to estimates from Alinea Analytics. That's a remarkable number for ports of games originally released in 2010 and 2012.

Black Ops 2 dominated the split, moving 8.2 million copies compared to 3 million for Black Ops 1 — a gap that lines up with the louder online buzz Black Ops 2 has generated since launch. The generational split skews heavily toward current hardware: 93 percent of Black Ops 2 sales were on PS5, with just 7 percent on PS4, and Black Ops 1 shows a nearly identical 94/6 split in favor of PS5. Alinea analyst Rhys Elliott estimates Microsoft pulled in $435 million from the two ports combined — roughly equivalent to what Forza Horizon 6 made through game sales since its release. That's a striking comparison given the ports launched with no meaningful technical upgrades and have continued to struggle with lobby hacking and prestige exploits.

The audience profile Elliott sketched out is telling: most buyers are 30–40 year-olds returning to games they played in their teens or early twenties. That nostalgia crowd also plays EA Sports FC 26 (24 percent), the Black Ops 1 port alongside Black Ops 2 (23 percent), the Call of Duty app including Warzone (19 percent), NBA 2K26 (13 percent), and Rainbow Six Siege (10 percent). They also overlap heavily with the broader PlayStation audience for Fortnite, GTA 5, Minecraft, and Roblox — suggesting these aren't hardcore COD diehards but mainstream PlayStation players who grew up with the franchise.

The numbers land despite real criticism at launch over the ports' price-to-value ratio and ongoing anti-cheat problems — neither of which slowed sales in any measurable way. Whether Activision addresses the hacking issues now that the commercial case for these ports has been so clearly validated remains to be seen.