Treyarch has set Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on a new course for PlayStation, with both games due in July as native ports. Iron Galaxy Studios will handle the work of turning the two older shooters into modern PlayStation versions.
That matters because the games have not been easy to play on PS4 or PS5 in any native way. Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 first arrived on Xbox 360, PC and PS3 in 2010 and 2012, then became playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in 2016 through Xbox Backwards Compatibility Program support. On PlayStation, the only route has been streaming through PlayStation Plus Premium, which is a very different experience from having the games installed locally.
The July ports matter most for players looking for a straightforward way to revisit the two games on current PlayStation hardware. Because the PS4 and PS5 are not backwards compatible with PS3 games, a native release changes the basic terms of access rather than simply adding another storefront option. In practical terms, it puts two familiar Call of Duty titles on modern PlayStation consoles without forcing players to rely on streaming.
One part of the rollout is still unsettled. It remains unclear whether people who already own Black Ops or Black Ops 2 on PS3 will get the new PlayStation versions for free, or whether any progress can move over to the native ports. The games are also presumed to connect to the existing server network, but that has not been confirmed, and the release leaves open the question of whether anything about the online setup will change when the ports arrive.
For now, the cleanest read is that July will bring the first native PlayStation versions of both games after years in which Xbox players had the easier path and PlayStation players had only streaming. The missing details are the ones that will decide how complete the upgrade feels: what PS3 owners get, what carries over, and whether the online experience is simply preserved or rebuilt around something new.
