The latest patch to Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War may not have fixed a lot of bugs (from what I can tell) but it was notable for one thing in that it introduced further integration with the previous game (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) beyond just the Warzone mode.

For some time Modern Warfare has employed a menu that gave players an opportunity to invest in this year’s game and even try out the beta when it was running. And as soon as the new game officially launched it would let you skip over to it fairly quickly. You could even take your parties over too. However it was all one way traffic as Cold War never offered anything in reverse. But that appears to have changed now with both games employing a similar three panel menu with each game to a side and Warzone in the middle. Modern Warfare‘s menus have evolved over time as Warzone became its own thing but seeing the swift change on the Cold War side post launch makes me think those integrations came very late in the development timeline. In other words… they only exist now because of Warzone and weren’t part of the initial plan for the game.

It’ll be interesting to see how it works out in the long term. There’s a chance it will help both games have a longer shelf life by running under a common platform/interface (of sorts) that almost works as free advertising. EA/DICE have been doing that for sometime now with the Battlefield series which also allows you to discreetly jump between the games you own but never with a season pass system that offers progression by playing multiple games which is something that’s about to arrive with Cold War. That could be a real first if it helps people stick with the series for longer and may also mean the studios developing the games will have to work even more closely together and follow a road map that ensures these kinds of integrations continue. Time will tell! 🙂