The recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 rerelease has reportedly attracted 5.25 million weekly PS5 players in the US, surpassing the nearly 5 million previously recorded for Black Ops 7 and Warzone combined. Black Ops 2 has always been a fan-favorite Call of Duty entry, with players typically noting that it has some of the strongest multiplayer and Zombies content in the entire franchise.
Activision finally released native PS4 and PS5 versions of the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2 on July 9, 2026. While these releases are straight ports rather than full-on remakes or remasters, their campaigns, multiplayer modes, and Zombies content have all been brought to newer PlayStation hardware, mostly intact. Some modes are missing from Black Ops 1 and 2, but by and large, they’re the same games fans fell in love with over a decade and a half ago. Both shooters launched at $39.99 with a PS Plus discount to $19.99 for a limited time, making these drops a significant event for PlayStation users who missed the original PS3 run of both games.
Black Ops 2 Just Beat Black Ops 7 and Warzone Combined on PS5
The return of the original Black Ops duology has certainly been a hit with fans, as MysticRyan and Spawn Wave of the SpawnCast have recently found that Black Ops 2‘s weekly PS5 player count hit 5.25 million US users, while Black Ops 1 brought in approximately 1.9 million as of July 16. MysticRyan gathered this data from PlayStation’s experimental weekly player-count widget, which is only available to users participating in the beta, so this number is not currently available through any standard player-count charts. The discussion on player counts starts at 2:03:15 in the YouTube video. Per the widget, this statistic represents the number of players who launched or played the game during the week, not the number playing simultaneously, and it only covers PS5 users in the United States rather than Black Ops 2‘s complete global audience across both current PlayStation consoles.
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Compared to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Warzone, it appears that BO2 is outpacing both games combined if the PS player count widget is to be believed. A Charlie Intel Twitter post from May 15 showed that the Call of Duty HQ launcher had just under 5 million players booting up BO7, Warzone, or another game in the franchise the week the widget launched. Fans should note that because Call of Duty HQ is a launcher for the most recent entries in the series, the total cannot be cleanly divided among any single recent title. Even with that qualification, 2012’s Black Ops 2 drawing 5.25 million weekly users is staggering, as that number exceeds the entire hub’s previous figures.
Black Ops 2’s launch performance is only a testament to the enduring demand for older Call of Duty experiences, particularly from the Xbox 360 and PS3 era. Both of these returning Black Ops games offer a more traditional multiplayer structure than recent entries in the series, with recognizable fan-favorite maps, straightforward progression mechanics, and fewer live-service systems competing for players’ attention. Simple nostalgia is also a contributing factor, but these results could certainly suggest that other unavailable legacy Call of Duty games may have sizable audiences waiting for modern console versions.
However, fans should note that weekly player counts are different from average concurrent users, total sales, engagement hours, or long-term player retention. Black Ops 2‘s impressive figures were measured during its highly anticipated launch period, while the Call of Duty HQ number came from a couple of months back, during the middle of Black Ops 7‘s content cycle, in what is considered a “down year” for the series. Future weekly figures will provide a more meaningful indication of whether Black Ops 2 has really overtaken Call of Duty‘s newest releases or simply enjoyed a huge launch. Regardless of whether these ports maintain this momentum, they do make a compelling case for Activision to keep bringing classic Call of Duty games to modern hardware.
- Released
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November 13, 2012
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs
- Engine
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