Black Ops 1 and 2 Ports Have Better Resolution On PlayStation Than Xbox

On Thursday, Activision released the ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. And while there’s plenty of discussion about the games, from pricing to cross-generation functionality, there’s also been talk about how it performs on the modern hardware.

While it’s functionally the same game, there is one aspect of Black Ops 1 and 2 that makes it better on PlayStation than Xbox.

Black Ops In Beautiful(?) 1080p

In testing of the game, Digital Foundry found that the Black Ops 1 and 2 ports have been upscaled to a 1080p resolution. Both the PS4 and PS5 offer 1080p60. That resolution is better than the Xbox version running through backward compatibility. Playing the game that way sees it limited to the same 608p resolution from the Xbox 360.

Despite this improved resolution, however, Digital Foundry was disappointed with a few aspects of the ports.

The main frustration is that the games don’t run at 4K on the PS5 despite the console being more than capable of handling it. There’s also no anti-aliasing, which keeps the game looking a bit jagged.

As far as why, they guess it might be because Microsoft, which owns Activision, doesn’t want the game to look better on PlayStation than on its own hardware. However, PlayStation does have a higher resolution than Xbox, so it doesn’t make much sense to them.

What do you think of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 having a higher resolution on PlayStation than on Xbox? Do you think more should’ve been done with the games than having them be just basic ports? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming Discord.

In other news, read about Sony’s CEO selling over half of his stock in the company after the PlayStation disc announcement. And for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.