Black Ops 2 Not Coming to Xbox Backward Compatibility
By Kyle Sledge 13 February 2017
The head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, Phil Spencer, officially declares that rumors of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 coming to Xbox One’s backward compatibility program are not true.
About a month ago, Phil Spencer made it known that he wanted to see Activision and Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 become an Xbox One’s backward compatible title, which led to a lot of rumors and speculation from both fans of Microsoft and of the first-person shooter about the game being added to the program’s catalog soon, if not by next week. As it happens, even though the Xbox boss still hopes that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will be ushered onto Microsoft’s current generation console thanks to backward compatibility, Spencer has now declared such rumors to be false.
As seen in the tweets below, Phil Spencer denied as much while responding to a question from a fan on Twitter, with the Xbox head definitively stating that the scuttlebutt involving Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 coming to Xbox One’s backward compatibility catalog is “not true.” Interestingly enough, though, another fan asked whether or not the Treyarch-developed first-person shooter could eventually be added later this month, with Spencer not offering any details if that will be the case, as the Microsoft executive stated, “I can’t comment on later releases on [third-party] games but rumors on this right now aren’t true. Sorry. I wish I had better news for you.”
@bo2_army Not true.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) February 12, 2017
For those unaware, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is currently the most-requested game for backwards compatibility, according to the Xbox Feedback site, which allows the fans to vote on the titles they want to see added to the program. As of writing, Black Ops 2 has upwards of 211,000 votes from the community, which is far more than the cries for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which sits in the second place slot with 173,000 votes.
While it’s important to note that votes on the Xbox Feedback site won’t necessarily generate any actual results, it’s clear that there’s a high demand for all Call of Duty titles to become backward compatible on the current-generation console. Interestingly enough, the rest of the top 5 consists of games from Activision’s long-running first-person shooter franchise, with Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, sitting in the third, fourth, and fifth spots, respectively.
With there already being four other Call of Duty games that are playable on Xbox One – Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Call of Duty: World at War, that is – it stands to reason that Black Ops 2 will eventually be added to the list, especially with so many people wanting the title to become a part of the backward compatible program. However, there’s no telling exactly how soon it will occur, as it took a long time for other highly coveted titles like Red Dead Redemption to make the cut.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U.
