Call of Duty’s user interface, which has been a big topic of negative discussion for several years, will be getting overhauled for Black Ops 6.
Currently, upon opening up the Call of Duty app that houses multiple titles, players need to scroll up and down through various games to find what they’re looking for. Thankfully, and mercifully for CoD addicts, this will be changing in just a couple of months.
Set to arrive in mid-October, the new UI will include an “improved menu and navigation experience” that Activision is “still putting the finishing touches on,” beginning with a transitional period before Black Ops 6 goes live later in the month. A work-in-progress video of the UI can be seen above.
“The new user interface will introduce a Call of Duty landing zone where top content will be visible on one clean page without needing to scroll,” Activision said. “The landing page’s main focus is on games, and gives players the ability to directly access those games.”
As part of the update, battle royale mode Warzone will become its own, separate download. While it can still found within the CoD HQ UI, selecting Warzone from within it will be a cross-launch process. But, if you don’t want Warzone with your initial BO6 download, it won’t be included by default.
“When you purchase an annual title, you will only download the files for that game by default,” Activision said. “On the free-to-play side, players can ‘opt-in’ to get Warzone when they’re downloading a new annual title or simply download it separately at any point in time. The choice is yours.”
Activision says the new CoD HQ landing page will feature the “most recent annual title” along with Warzone, “for ease of access,” but other CoD titles can also be found within the player’s individual game library or a “Last Played” title, if it was the game that was played last.
When the update goes live before BO6’s launch, MW3 and Warzone will be the featured titles, with the former being replaced by BO6 when it’s finally released.
This big list of improvements to the UI is likely very necessary because CoD games all being found within the one singular HQ location doesn’t sound like it’s going away any time soon.
“Our goal is to provide a place where players can come in and enjoy whatever Call of Duty experience they wish – download and play what you want, when you want,” Activision said. “This approach also allows us to address technology and content management challenges that occurred when CoD games were separate installs and Warzone was tied to a single annual title.”
