As their servers seem to have improved after years of stagnation, several older Call of Duty games are back at the top of the Xbox Store page.

Some iconic Xbox 360-era Call of Duty titles currently top the Xbox Top Paid Games list. This is because the games’ matchmaking servers have been randomly improved. The yearly release of CoD games over the past decade or more has meant that each new game has slowly become obsolete as the machine churns out the next title year after year.

With the highly rumoured announcement of Modern Warfare 3 in 2023 looming, the maker of Call of Duty has somehow found time to go back and fix the online matchmaking of many of its most popular Xbox 360-era titles.

With the help of heavy discounts, these CoD games have seen player numbers soar while once again dominating Xbox sales charts.

In the Xbox Store’s Top Paid Games section, four classic Call of Duty games from the late 2000s and early 2010s have reclaimed the top four spots. CoD: Black Ops, Black Ops 2, Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Modern Warfare 3 are at the top as they were in their glory days. And 2012’s Black Ops 2 is in first place. These four games currently eclipse such bestsellers as last year’s Modern Warfare 2, NBA 2K23 and the recently released Diablo IV, while CoD: Black Ops 3 and World at War are in 8th and 9th place, respectively. Ahead of games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Hogwarts Legacy and the 2022 game of the year, Elden Ring.

Most Call of Duty games are more than a decade old. All of them are marked with deep discounts. The fact that the multiplayer matchmaking for these games was improved just days after Xbox won the FTC for Activision’s acquisition of Blizzard has many believing that Xbox was behind it. But this has not yet been confirmed. Many younger gamers never had the opportunity to play these old titles. It’s no wonder that these games are experiencing huge player booms now that they finally have the opportunity.

Source: Xbox Store