New Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 PS5 update turns the ports into Modern Warfare 4 ads

Earlier this year, PS4 and PS5 got native ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2. Now, Microsoft and Activision are turning these beloved FPS titles into billboards for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, with a big ol' pre-order button for the upcoming game stuck right there in the main multiplayer menu.

These new "pre-order MW4" options appeared after recent updates to the PlayStation versions of both Black Ops 1 and 2. Call of Duty news account CharlieIntel tweets images of both the updated menus, which gives the Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders equal billing with such features as "play online" and "options."

Of course, it's not unusual for modern online games to include regularly updated "news" feeds that often include what are basically ads for new DLC or upcoming sequels. But ports of the OG Black Ops games were well-received, in part, because a big chunk of the COD fandom is frustrated with the state of the modern games. Those same players are, at their most polite, giving a big "yeah, no thanks" to these ads.

Clearly, Microsoft wants every eye it can get on Modern Warfare 4. While Black Ops 7 sales are monstrous compared to almost every other game in the industry, it failed to beat Battlefield 6 on the US sales charts last year. That's the first time in the long rivalry between the two series that EA's FPS has come out on top. Certainly, not the outcome that Xbox was looking for after its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is falling, and all it cost was day one access to new Call of Duty games.