‘Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2’ Finally Joins Xbox One Backward Compatibility With Solid Performance

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has been one of the most requested titles to be added to Xbox One’s backward compatibility since Microsoft first announced the program in June 2015. The seminal shooter is finally playable on the current-gen console and comes with some nice performance improvements as a result.

The first hint of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 being backward compatible with the Xbox One came via the Spring sale in the Xbox Store, which started Tuesday. The game has been discounted by 50 percent and can currently be picked up for $20. Microsoft later made backward compatibility official later in the day.

“The Xbox 360 hits keep coming thanks to the Xbox One Backward Compatibility program, and today we’ve got one of the biggest hits of all: Call of Duty: Black Ops II is now playable on Xbox One via Backward Compatibility,” Xbox Wire’s Will Tuttle announced.

“This blockbuster joins more than 350 Xbox 360 classics available on Xbox One. We’re thrilled with the continued excitement for the program and ongoing engagement of our fans, who have played more than 360 million hours of Xbox 360 games on Xbox One.”

Black Ops 2 was one of the most requested games to receive backwards compatibility support in the Xbox User Voice poll. That distinction now belongs to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim followed by all three Call of Duty: Modern Warfare titles. How likely it is any of them will make it is unknown since Skyrim has a remastered edition on sale for the Xbox One and the original Modern Warfare has been remastered and packed in with last fall’s Infinite Warfare.

Fans of the shooter will be happy to know Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 runs extremely well on the Xbox One. VG Tech did a quick side-by-side comparison of the game running on the current-gen and last-gen consoles. As expected, the current-gen console runs fairly steady at 60 frames per second (fps) during gameplay sections with no screen tearing and an occasional dip down to 59 fps. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 version drops into the low 50s and high 40s frequently.

VG Tech‘s analysis did notice MSAA, an anti-aliasing technique, was missing on the Xbox One version of the game, however. They claim this led to some rough edges in the game, though it is unclear in their video.

Still, this is another excellent backwards compatible port for the Xbox One. It may have taken a long time to finally arrive, but the result of the software engineering effort appears to have paid off. This will only continue with the release of the Xbox Scorpio this holiday with the promise of more power and features to benefit current and last-gen games.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Xbox One manages backward compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Following that, testing to make sure the game runs correctly on the Xbox One appears to be a time-consuming task. Microsoft has to test each game from beginning to end to ensure the emulator runs the title correctly. This can take hundreds of hours depending on the title.

Additionally, Microsoft uses an Xbox Uservoice group to gauge interest in which titles to add to the Xbox One backward compatibility library. Users can suggest and vote up which games they would like to see supported.

[Featured Image by Activision]