One month ago it was revealed that, despite PS3 and Xbox 360 still getting a version of the latest Call of Duty this year, owners of the old systems wouldn't be able to enjoy the single-player story campaign.
Very little explanation was offered back then, but now developers at Treyarch have give one of many potential situations where the almost 10-year old hardware would've been unable to handle some of the modern features.
"Let's just take a simple system, a really simple one - the weapon that you have," campaign director Jason Blundell explained to the Official Xbox Magazine (and as transcribed by Gamesradar). "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".
When PS4, Xbox One and PC owners get the game starting this week, they will be offered the unprecedented option of playing the single-player campaign episodes freely, in whatever order they please (you can read more about that here).
