Activision to change release strategy for Call of Duty, as new data suggests player count has halved in 12 months

Activision has announced it will no longer ship back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games, as new data shared with GamesIndustry.biz indicates significant underperformance by the recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

The game was poorly received by reviewers and players, with a Metacritic score of 66 on console and 57 on PC, and third-party tracking data from multiple sources suggests the game attracted far fewer players than previous releases in the series.

Data from Alinea Analytics provided to GamesIndustry.biz suggests that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 sold 401,000 copies on Steam 26 days after launch, compared to Black Ops 6 selling 2.3 million units during the same period last year. Its competitor Battlefield 6 sold 5.7 times faster on Steam following its early October launch, Alinea said.

The data is indicative: Call of Duty sales tend to be weaker on Steam as the game hasn’t always been available on the platform, and it’s also included in PC Game Pass.

Separate data from Newzoo suggests parent app Call of Duty HQ maintained a monthly average user (MAU) count of 21.5M Jan-Oct 2005, not including the launch of Black Ops 7, with 93.6M lifetime players.

Video Game Insights provided additional statistics, with Steam data indicating that Black Ops 7 underperformed the three most recent Call of Duty games by a wide margin, with a concurrent-user peak 80% lower than that of 2002’s Modern Warfare 2. The company said its estimates of DAU and MAU figures across PC, Playstation and Xbox correlate with its Steam data, showing a launch-period peak for Black Ops 7 that fell short of 2024’s Black Ops 6. VGI pegs overall Call of Duty DAU at 18M in November 2024, following a steady decline from 36M in December 2024.

Activision has not released sales or performance data for Black Ops 7. The post announcing the strategy change, attributed to “The Call of Duty Team”, proclaimed that “the future of Call of Duty is very strong” and that it wants to “drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental. While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right.”

“Daily active users across all three major platforms of PC, PlayStation, and Xbox remain meaningfully lower than recent benchmarks,” said Video Game Insights in a statement accompanying its data. “No single platform appears to be compensating for another; instead, player participation is uniformly compressed across the ecosystem. Interestingly, however, the proportional share of users across these platforms has stayed relatively constant over the past twelve months. That stability indicates the decline is not the result of players abandoning one platform for another. Rather, it reflects a universal contraction of interest in the newest instalment.”

“Taken together, the data points to a foundational engagement challenge for Black Ops 7. Whether the cause lies in franchise fatigue, shifting genre preferences, competition from other titles, or a misalignment with player expectations, the early indicators are clear: this is not a normal launch-cycle fluctuation. It is a significant departure from historical performance.”

Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics believes that making Black Ops 7 a day one release “cannibalised traditional full-price game sales on Xbox and PC.”

Elliott also points to recent reports that Black Ops 6’s day one Game Pass launch reportedly cost Microsoft $300 million in potential console and PC sales.

“While Call of Duty will remain a revenue behemoth, its vulnerability puts pressure on the rest of Microsoft’s gaming division, which is already facing practically unattainable profitability targets,” says Elliott. “Ultimately, the results of Black Ops 7 serve as a loud and clear mandate for change under Microsoft’s stewardship.”

“The future of Call of Duty under Xbox will be defined by its ability to course-correct here and ignore its 30% profitability short term for the longer-term health of the franchise. Whether this is just an off year for Call of Duty or the first chapter in the downfall of an industry mainstay depends on what Xbox does next.”

Looking specifically at Black Ops 7, Elliott suggests its underperformance was due “to a combination of community burnout, questionable creative and business decisions by Activision and Microsoft, and strong competition.”

“Black Ops 7’s specific issues contribute to its underperformance, but in general there’s a systemic challenge: the live-service shooter market is now ruthlessly consolidated,” Elliott continues, highlighting the recent successes of Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2.

“Finding consistent success in this segment is difficult, even for a massive, established franchise. The path to success is no longer a guaranteed annual release, but rather requires exceptional product quality, genuine innovation, or finding a neglected sub-genre or new niche, where the inertia of the ‘incumbents’ does not yet hold absolute sway.”

He concludes: “For years, Call of Duty was virtually immune to competition, but now the player base is splitting and annoyed, the franchise is creatively drained, and rivals have been more methodical and focused (setting record launches in the process).

“Xbox will need to shift its strategy. The one-year cycle no longer works. It’s time for a once-every-two-years Call of Duty with Warzone and seasonal content in between.”