You're sitting on the couch with a friend, two controllers in hand, ready to see how Liberty Falls looks in local play. It feels like 2011 again. Except, it isn't. Trying to figure out how to play split screen zombies bo6 offline is honestly a bit of a headache because of how modern Call of Duty games handle "always-online" requirements.
It used to be simple. You’d pop the disc in, hit local, and start slaying. Now? Not so much. Black Ops 6 uses a heavy amount of texture streaming. That means the game is constantly pulling high-quality assets from the cloud to save space on your hard drive. Because of this, the "offline" part of the equation is a bit of a misnomer. You can play without a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass Core subscription, but your console usually still needs a heartbeat from the internet just to fetch those textures and verify your licenses.
Setting Up the Second Player
First, let's talk hardware. You need two controllers. Obviously. But you also need two accounts.
In the old days, "Guest" accounts were the gold standard. Today, Activision is much pickier. To get split screen working, the second player really should be signed into a real Xbox or PlayStation profile. It doesn't need to be a paid subscription profile, but a local guest account often triggers errors or simply won't let the "Press X to Join" prompt appear.
Once you're at the main menu of Black Ops 6, look at the top right corner. You'll see your name and a prompt for player two. Have the second person press the button (usually X on PlayStation or A on Xbox). If the game doesn't recognize them immediately, you might need to back out to the very first "Press Start" screen. It’s annoying. Sometimes the UI just hangs, and you have to restart the app entirely. This happens more often than Treyarch would probably like to admit.
The Offline Mode Hurdle
If you are truly, 100% offline—meaning no ethernet cord and no Wi-Fi—the game behaves differently. You'll likely see a "Connection Failed" message. From there, you can choose "Go Offline."
Here is the catch: when you play how to play split screen zombies bo6 offline in the literal sense, your progression is totally separate. Anything you unlock—camos, GobbleGums, Reticles—won't carry over to your online profile. It's a closed ecosystem.
Also, the performance takes a hit.
Running two viewpoints on one console is a massive tax on the hardware. In Black Ops 6, the frame rate often targets 60fps, but in split screen, expect dips into the 30s when the horde gets thick. The game also uses black bars on the sides of the screens to maintain the aspect ratio. It's not a full-screen stretch. It keeps the image from looking like a funhouse mirror, but it makes a 55-inch TV feel like a 32-inch pretty quickly.
Why Some Maps Feel Different
Liberty Falls and Terminus are the launch maps. They are dense. When playing split screen, you might notice some textures looking a bit "muddy." That’s the texture streaming we talked about. If you're offline, the game can't pull the ultra-high-res files, so it relies on the base assets installed on your drive.
Honestly, it still looks decent, but the lighting is the first thing to go. Shadow quality drops. You might see some pop-in. But if you’re just trying to see how many rounds you can survive in the Jetset diner, it doesn't really matter.
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Troubleshooting the "No Split Screen" Glitch
Sometimes the option just disappears. You're looking at the menu and the "Add Controller" prompt is gone.
Usually, this is because the game thinks you're in a game mode that doesn't support it. While Zombies supports two-player split screen, it does NOT support four-player split screen. If you have three controllers connected, the game might get confused and disable the prompt entirely. Stick to two.
Another weird quirk? The "Quick Start" or "Resume" features on modern consoles (like Xbox Quick Resume) absolutely wreck Call of Duty's menu logic. If you're having trouble, force-close the game. Kill the app from the dashboard. Restart it fresh. Nine times out of ten, that fixes the missing split screen prompt.
Essential Next Steps for the Best Experience
To make the most of your couch co-op session, you should check your settings immediately after getting both players in the lobby.
Go into the graphics settings and turn off Motion Blur for both players. In split screen, the reduced screen real estate makes motion blur feel nauseating. You want the image to be as crisp as possible. Also, consider bumping the Field of View (FOV) up slightly, but don't max it out. High FOV in split screen can cause even more frame rate drops because the console has to render even more of the environment at once.
Ensure your console is set as your "Home" console. This is vital for playing offline because it allows the hardware to verify you own the game without needing to ping the Activision servers. Without this setting toggled on in your system menus, the "Go Offline" mode might lock you out of the game entirely.
Check your audio settings too. In split screen, the game mixes the audio for both players. It can be chaotic. If you both wear headsets, you'll still hear each other's zombies. There isn't a way to split the audio channels perfectly, so playing through TV speakers is usually the most "natural" way to handle the noise.
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Once you have the second player joined and the settings dialed in, head to the "Local" tab in the Zombies menu, select your map, and start the match. You won't earn XP for your overall rank, but you'll get the pure, unfiltered experience of 2-player local survival.