Why doesn‘t Black Ops 3 have a campaign?
As a huge Call of Duty fan, I was both stunned and disappointed when Activision announced that Black Ops 3 on Xbox 360 and PS3 would not include the epic new campaign mode that the PS4, Xbox One, and PC versions touted.
Unprecedented Campaign Scope Demanded Current-Gen Hardware
According to Activision, implementing Black Ops 3‘s ambitious 1-4 player online co-op campaign with its massive environments, high player counts, destructible setpieces, and cutting edge graphics simply wasn‘t feasible on the severely limited Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware.
They just couldn‘t translate that scale of campaign onto a dozen year old systems without extreme compromises that would have tarnished the experience and vision.
The Stunning Progress of Call of Duty Campaigns
As someone who has eagerly played every Call of Duty campaign on launch day year after year, even I didn‘t fully appreciate the staggering technological leap that Black Ops 3 made over its predecessors.
Looking back, the gulf in graphical quality between the original 2007 Modern Warfare and 2008‘s World at War was largely incremental. But the chains fully came off with Black Ops 3 – the size and spectacle blown out exponentially thanks to finally harnessing true next-gen computing power.
Just gaze upon this progression of campaign scope over time:
| Game | Key Campaign Features |
| Call of Duty 2 (2005) | Single protagonist. Linear levels. Scope limited by age. |
| Modern Warfare (2007) | Refined graphics/gameplay. More diverse locales. |
| Black Ops (2010) | Expanded branching story. Increased setpieces. |
| Black Ops 2 (2012) | Non-linear sections. Story impacted by player choice. |
| Black Ops 3 (2015) | 4-player co-op online. Huge open battlegrounds. Destructible environments. |
This table doesn‘t even touch on graphical improvements over the years enabled by more powerful hardware. Suffice to say, Black Ops 3 cranked every knob up to 11.
Analysis of Xbox 360/PS3 Technical Limitations
So exactly why couldn‘t 2010‘s hardware party like 2015‘s shiny new toys? Let‘s dig into the technical deficiencies of age that crafted the chains ultimately restricting last-gen ambition:
Severely Underpowered Graphics and Physics
The Xbox 360 relied on a custom 500MHz ATI graphics chip, while the PS3 utilized an anemic 550MHz Nvidia processor – both woefully inadequate for advanced effects utilized throughout Black Ops 3 like volumetric lighting, detailed textures, complex shading, realistic physics, smooth animation, and immersive depth of field.
Implementing those features, if even possible, would have torpedoed framerate and fidelity to unacceptable levels.
Highly Constrained System Memory and Storage
The aging Xbox 360 had just 512MB of system RAM available to games – the PS3 upped that to only 256MB system RAM supplemented by a faster 256MB video RAM.
Modern AAA games require up to 12GB shared memory for high resolution textures, massive multiplayer levels, expansive asset streaming, and stable performance.
Black Ops 3 leveraged that additional memory capacity along with 50+ GB game installs to enable sights previously impossible in the franchise.
Minimal Multi-Threading Support
The PS3 Cell processor uniquely provided multi-core parallelization suited for certain tasks, but complex systems like AI, physics, audio, and rendering all contended for resources. And the Xbox 360 CPU was purely single core.
Current generation 8-core, 16-thread processors can efficiently juggle the many complex simulations running concurrently in a huge 4-player co-op battle through a destructible next-gen world.
Fallout of Downgrading Black Ops 3‘s Campaign
With those severe technical limitations of age, I completely understand and support the difficult choice to axe the unprecedented campaign from Xbox 360/PS3, rather than release a disastrously downgraded subpar version.
Just imagine the fallout of trying to shoehorn such an ambitious cutting edge experience onto a system that can barely handle a linear corridor:
- Visuals muddied by low resolution, muted color, years-old textures
- Framerates plunging as low as 20fps in action scenes
- Draw distances collapsed to tiny bubbles around the player
- Physics and destruction stripped to appear utterly static
- Load times stretching to multiple minutes between areas
- Texture pop-in and asset streaming failures galore
- Co-op limited to just 2 players with microscopic splitscreen
Such a compromised port would have broken player immersion completely and made the campaign nearly unplayable – sullying the vision Activision rightfully protected.
The Campaign Deserved Next-Gen Hardware Unchained
By focusing last-gen resources strictly on the multiplayer and Zombies modes best suited for those aging platforms, fans were still given quality experiences minus the performance woes.
And I‘m ecstatic Activision didn‘t handicap the stunning campaign deserving of unrestricted cutting edge hardware to truly fulfill its complete unprecedented potential.
That soaring scope just couldn‘t have happened on last-gen boxes bursting at the seams. Bravo to the publishers for pushing boundaries and protecting the campaign‘s vision.
Now time for me to dive back into the expansive campaign boasting graphical wizardry onlyPossible through the power of current hardware fully unleashed! The future for Call of Duty campaigns sure gleams bright!!
