Activision's decision to remove the campaign from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 has been backed by the game's core developer Treyarch.
Though development of the last-gen editions is being handled by Beenox and Mercenary Technology, Treyarch's Jason Blundell, director of campaign and Zombies mode, told Eurogamer that bringing the campaign to the older consoles would have required too great a compromise.
"We being Treyarch, we're only looking at the current-gen stuff, so PS4 and Xbox One. And when we hear the old-gen stuff start having to take things away to be able to make it perform on those machines... they're like, 'okay, we're going to have to lose this, and lose that, and bring this back in,' from a purely selfish point of view, I completely agreed with Activision's decision to cut the campaign, because I don't want you to get a second-rate experience. So I agreed on that level."
He added: "It took us three years to make this thing and craft that experience. I would hate for someone to get something that isn't true to the vision. That sounds a bit arty, but that's how I feel about it. I agreed with Activision's decision on not going there. I don't think they could have faithfully conveyed some of the concepts I wanted into the campaign experience.
"If we took something and started cutting it up into pieces and taking those bits away, that would have made me more upset, to be honest."
The game launches in November.