The future of Call of Duty is a little up in the air right now. With Microsoft poised to take over the franchise with its Activision-Blizzard acquisition, Call of Duty could be about to undergo some pretty big changes, one of which will apparently include putting the series on Nintendo Switch for at least the next decade. But Call of Duty has been down this path before, and if there's anything that Call of Duty: Black Ops 3's previous-gen ports should have told Activision, it's that sometimes it's best to move onto new hardware rather than release an unfinished product on old tech.
Released back in November 2015, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is widely considered to be one of the best entries in the long-running military shooter franchise. With a decent campaign mode, some of the best Zombies maps of all time, and some truly outstanding multiplayer offerings, Black Ops 3 is a lot of fans' favorite entry, but the same certainly can't be said for its Xbox 360 and PS3 ports.
It's Time for Call of Duty to Leave Last-Gen Consoles Behind
The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 released on exactly the same day as the Xbox One and PS4 ports, dropping on November 6, 2015. At this time, the previous-gen consoles had become incredibly outdated. The Xbox One and PS4 had been out for over two years, and developers had long since stopped porting cross-generation titles. For reference, Assassin's Creed Unity was deemed too powerful for the last-gen consoles, and that launched in 2014. That being said, that didn't necessarily mean that Black Ops 3's last-gen port would be bad, but it most certainly was.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on Xbox 360 and PS3 gained immediate media attention for its atrocious presentation. Featuring some truly horrendous low-poly graphics, Black Ops 3 ended up looking somehow worse than some of the very first Call of Duty entries on those consoles, with grass textures clipping out of the ground and a bevy of other technical issues plaguing the game's visuals. The game's sound wasn't much better, lacking the same crispness present in Black Ops 3's next-gen ports.
To make matters worse, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on Xbox 360 and PS3 was also an unfinished game. At launch, this version of Black Ops 3 lacked its entire campaign mode, and after the game received its first DLC, Activision stopped supporting it, rendering it outdated within just a few months of existence. A lot of Black Ops 3's issues came from its rushed development, with Beenox taking the reins on these last-gen ports. Though Beenox had worked on many games before this, including a few Spider-Man entries, it had never worked on a Call of Duty project before. That lack of experience paired disastrously with the technical limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3, consoles which were almost a decade old at this point.
Put simply, Call of Duty cannot afford to make the same mistake as it did with Black Ops 3. While Activision will naturally want to retain as wide of an audience as possible, keeping Call of Duty restricted by previous-gen hardware only ends up harming players on all platforms, with those on past-gen not getting a full experience, and those on current-gen not getting the best performance they could be getting. With Nintendo Switch Call of Duty entries reportedly on the way as well, Call of Duty runs the risk of creating some of the worst-performing ports ever made if it doesn't put experienced developers on the case.