Home Gaming Here’s why Black Ops 3 on old-gen has no single player

Here’s why Black Ops 3 on old-gen has no single player

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ram

I’ve been convinced for a while now that the old-gen versions of the impending Call of Duty: Black Ops3 will be garbage. They’re being ported by Activision-owned Spider-man factory Beenox and porting studio Mercenary Technology; most notable for bringing Dead Rising 2 and Resident Evil 5 to PC. More often than not, when that happens, the resulting game is a mess.

We already know that the game isn’t even packing the single player campaign on the nearly 10 year old consoles, instead focusing on the multiplayer and Zombies aspects of shooter series. Worse, is that this port will eschew the traditional 60fps of the games, and run at 30fps – which isn’t exactly ideal for a competitive first person shooter.

That game is being built for the newer consoles, so the lack of buttery-smooth 60fps, while a staple of the series, is a little forgivable. The lack of a campaign mode is less so – but why is it missing? Could it be that Activision just doesn’t give a damn? It has more to do with how little memory the old consoles have.

The Xbox 360 is packing a whopping 512MB of unified memory, while the PlayStation does proper black magic with its equal allocation of memory, which is split between system and video RAM. And it’s just not enough.

Speaking to OXM (via Gamesradar), campaign director Jason Blundell said it was better to have no campaign, than one that ripped its soul out.

“Let’s just take a simple system, a really simple one – the weapon that you have,” explained Blundell. “So it’s a co-op game. Let’s imagine I have my customised weapon and I’ve made it with a stock and all this extended mag and so forth. For you as a co-op player to see what weapon I have, you have to have loaded in the memory – in resident memory – every single weapon customisation. Current-gen memory just can’t do that.

You’d have to have everything loaded otherwise you just can’t see what I’m carrying. You know you could simplify things down, but I think [Activision] made the right choice because I would hate for people to get an experience that wasn’t true to the vision of it. As the director I’m incredibly passionate about the experience being a pure experience, that you get what I was trying to have you get.”

It all comes down to the four player co-op and the lack of memory available on the old systems. In truth, I think it’s about time publishers stopped making games for the old systems if they’re going to be significantly downgraded experiences. With the incredible install bases of those older machines and the increasing costs of games development, it’s just not going to happen as quickly as we’d like.

Do you think this was the right decision – or should they have just yanked the co-op and made the single player campaign on old systems a little more linear?

Last Updated: November 2, 2015

15 Comments

  1. Alien Emperor Trevor

    November 2, 2015 at 10:42

    Maybe it’s time for the old consoles to give up the goat?

    Reply

  2. Sageville

    November 2, 2015 at 10:42

    But, his example was a multiplayer issue?

    Not that I care, but his example was poor. either way old-gen blops3 is gonna be a kaaky port.

    Reply

    • HairyEwok

      November 2, 2015 at 10:57

      Maybe you can customize weapons in co-op now. We wouldn’t know until the game comes out and played by it’s hardcore fans.

      Reply

      • Arron Kleckner

        November 2, 2015 at 14:33

        the issue is bo3 you can make your own camos thus the game needs to load all that data or it glitches the game to hell

        Reply

      • Riyaadh Satar

        November 2, 2015 at 16:32

        the campaign is now a 4 player co-op experience bud

        Reply

  3. Hammersteyn

    November 2, 2015 at 10:44

    I think, they exclude the single player as a test. To see if people would still buy the game for the same price just to play multiplayer.

    Either that or they didn’t want to ship the game on more than one disc for the 360.

    Reply

    • Brady miaau

      November 2, 2015 at 11:00

      I like the way you think, there, good buddy. Or something.

      Actually quite clever of them, even if the technical reason is true and sound, still a good idea to see impact of sales and or game time after sales.

      Reply

    • Rock789

      November 2, 2015 at 11:23

      Nail on the head right there! Same price as always, less content… The hallmark of a lot of games nowadays… Not all, but a heck of a lot…

      Or maybe testing the waters for next year’s current-gen COD (no SP?)? o_O

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        November 2, 2015 at 11:54

        Exactly, too many times I’ve heard people saying the never bother with the SP. Plus hiring Kevin Spacey must’ve been pricey

        Reply

  4. Grand Admiral Chief SpaceNinja

    November 2, 2015 at 11:44

    Heh RAM

    Reply

  5. Grand Admiral Chief SpaceNinja

    November 2, 2015 at 11:45

    Reply

  6. Nikola

    November 2, 2015 at 11:56

    They might as well just don’t release it don’t see the point anymore of developing games for the old gen…I know some people still don’t have a new console but the new games just won’t work on old systems!

    Reply

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